Not Yet by Lightning
by Jade Sabre
Summary: Laura Farthing wrestles with her faith and her fate as her quest to save her village takes her farther from home than she ever wanted to go. NWN 2 OC.
1. Chapter 1

**Title:** Not Yet by Lightning

**Chapter: **One

**Author:** Jade Sabre

**Notes:** This is my first major-length, _completed_ fanfic. I must now bow down and acknowledge a huge creative debt to the following authors:

SparklyCaffeineJunkie, whose fic _Fortune_ is amazing, and who first introduced me to the idea of a sympathetic take on Casavir;

DarthAmmonite, who sadly does not appear to plan on finishing the best NWN 2 fic I have read, namely _The Smell of Destiny_, and who turned me into a gibbering Sand fangirl;

and RiikiTikiTavi, whose two fics "Bishop Takes Knight" and "Blame the Paladin" contain the best Bishop I've read, a Bishop that definitely influenced my own take on the character.

I must also shower love, praise, and unending adulation upon my most beloved friend and beta-reader, Quark, who has patiently been reading bits of this story since last August, and putting up with my questions and fretting and game spoilers and guilt-tripping, and helping me improve my writing exponentially. She is awesome. If you think this fic is in any way good, go thank her.

Rated M for language and adult situations occurring in later chapters.

I'm a bit nervous about putting this out for the world to see. I would greatly, GREATLY appreciate any and all reviews that y'all leave me. I'm always looking to improve my writing, to know what I'm doing right and what I'm doing wrong, and to hear people's general thoughts on what's going on.

**Disclaimer:** I don't own Neverwinter Nights, or any of its sequels or expansions, or any of the characters contained herein, aside from my PC, who was created on a Bioware engine and thus probably therefore partially belongs to them too.

* * *

**1**

The Sunken Flagon was, by nature of its location and purpose, the sort of place that attracted a wide variety of people, mostly unsavory and almost always unwashed. After working there for nearly a decade, Sal had gotten used to the sights and the smells of the establishment's patrons. He had learned early on it was better to stay behind the bar and make a great show of wiping it down when he had nothing better to do. Better to let Duncan handle the mingling—he was much better with patrons, potentially because he could match them drink for drink as the night progressed. Sal was content to man his station, serving up drinks and dreaming of the day when he would be able to leave the Sunken Flagon behind and open his own bar.

He considered himself a simple, unflappable man—he'd serve anything that walked through the door as long as it was able to walk up to the bar and place an order, no matter what race (or combination of races) it appeared to be. Coin was coin, and that was all he required for his (many, multitudinous, he told himself) talents. He figured he'd seen almost everything there was to see, and the few things that he hadn't seen were better left unviewed.

It was a fall afternoon. The sun was setting earlier as the days went on, pushing up the time the bar was at its busiest from eight o'clock to six, which meant there was more work to be done in a shorter amount of time, so Sal was taking advantage of a break in the daytime patronage to wipe down the tables. The evening waitress was taking barding classes at the Academy during the day, and Duncan was still trying to sleep off the last of last night's hangover before getting properly drunk again tonight. It was one of the few times he was completely alone (well, aside from Bishop, brooding in the corner—he would've sworn the other man never slept, or even _moved_ from his slouched position near the fireplace), and he liked to pretend that the Flagon was his. He knew that would never happen, but she was a fine tavern, well-built and refurbished after the war, and it didn't hurt to think about what he would do with the place (get rid of Bishop, for starters—he tended to scare away the pretty young girls Duncan was trying to attract to liven up the place).

There was a _creak_ and a sudden blast of ruddy sunlight as the door opened; sighing, Sal abandoned the table he was on and went back behind the bar, reaching down and grabbing a glass to clean instead. The door slammed shut and a deep, gravely voice said, "_This _is what we've been lookin' for?"

"Perhaps," said a cooler voice, one that was infinitely pragmatic. "Make yourselves comfortable."

Even Sal had to admit this was something he hadn't seen before. It wasn't that he'd never seen a dwarf (they were nigh impossible to avoid in the tavern business), or an elf (though this one had coloring similar to Duncan, and Duncan said his father was a wood-elf, and those were rare in cities), or hells, even a tiefling, before. But he'd never seen a group like that _together_, like they were traveling companions. There was a familiarity in the way they acted towards each other—even if it wasn't apparent from their voices—that suggested they were quite used to each other's company and not afraid to invade each other's space.

The dwarf headed straight for the bar, while the elf stood uncertainly in the middle, as if she didn't know where she wanted to be. The tiefling, her tail twitching, went to warm herself by the fire, while the fourth member of the group—the no-nonsense one, a human girl—approached the bar at a more leisurely pace, looking around the common room with an expression of placid interest.

Sal served the dwarf, his eyes still on the girl, now taking in the well-oiled armor mostly hidden beneath her strangely immaculate green cloak. Woman, then, he amended, watching the way she carried herself—confident, but unassuming, and very deliberate. She chose the stool next to the dwarf (happily imbibing in his own tankard) and said, "Whatever you're serving."

He poured her a mug of ale. "Travelers?" he asked, handing it to her. She was a pretty thing, in a kind of strong-featured way, so he figured it couldn't hurt to chat. Duncan liked the pretty ones.

"Yes," she said, taking a sip and having the decency not to wrinkle her nose. Sal liked her at once, but she didn't seem inclined to carry on with the conversation.

He refilled the dwarf's tankard at least twice more while the woman nursed her drink. The tiefling tried to strike up a conversation with Bishop (and failed miserably), and the elf stood around looking nervous. He tried to talk to the dwarf, but the stocky fighter was too enamored with his drink to be of any use to the cognizing world. Still, they seemed content to rest their feet, and he couldn't deny them their patronage. The sun slipped lower and lower, the light coming in through the closed window shades changing into the colors of the soft light spells cast on the lampposts outside, the white mingling with the dying orange and muting the small squares of light by the window. Gina—or, as she preferred to be called, Marangina, Loremaster of the Sword Coast—swept in late with a hurried apology, as usual, and immediately went to work lighting the interior. 

Sal was already starting to plan the course of the evening when the tiefling tired of the fireplace and moseyed over to the human woman's other side. "Hey, Laura," she said, "any word, yet?"

Laura shook her head, and the dwarf stopped drinking long enough to say, "It's not like she's even asked about it."

"You haven't?" the elf said quietly, barely audible from halfway across the room.

"Patience," Laura answered. "Just relax. It's okay to sit down, Elanee."

The elf moved and took a seat at a table closer to the bar, perching on the edge of her chair. Laura sighed and took another sip from her drink. The tiefling looked around, her tail waving aimlessly, until she finally said, "Hey, Stumpy, how many of those have you had?"

Judging by the look on the dwarf's face, this was not a new conversation, and Sal didn't try to keep up with the slough of insults hurled across the bar. Laura's expression went stiller, if that was possible, and Sal helpfully refilled her mug. "Happen often?"

"Yes," she said, and the amount of consternation she managed to put into that single word made Sal chuckle in sympathy.

It didn't take long for the two verbal combatants to leap off their chairs in order to deliver insults to each other's faces. They didn't trouble keeping their voices low as their words came faster and more furiously. Sal kept one eye on them—he wasn't anxious for a brawl to start, and he certainly didn't want to try to interrupt the two very capable-looking arguers.

"What in the Nine Hells is all that racket?" came a very cranky voice; Sal looked up and saw his employer stumble into the room, one hand pressed over his forehead as the other groped blindly for the bar. "Doesn't anyone have any respect for the weary?"

Sal barely noticed Laura's hand pause, holding the mug to her lips, as he reached under the bar and found the last vial of Sand's hangover remedy. He placed it in Duncan's outstretched hand; the half-elf uncorked it and downed it in one shot, letting out a deep breath as he shook his head. "That's the last of it," he informed him.

"Damn hedge-wizard—oi, you two! Knock it off, already!"

"And who do you think you are?" the dwarf demanded, one hand on the handaxe in his belt as he turned to the intruder.

Duncan, to his credit, never backed down in front of customers. "I'm the owner of this place, and we don't allow weapons in here. Sal, didn't you tell them that?"

Sal stared from the tiefling to the dwarf and let his expression answer for him. Duncan sighed and said, "Look, if you want to fight, take it outside. I won't stand for that here in the Flagon."

"So you're Duncan?" the tiefling said, looking him up and down.

There was a pause, and then Duncan said, "I didn't say that. And if this is about money, he's not here."

Sal stifled a groan and found a mug to wipe with a rag to occupy his hands. There was a pause, and then the elf—Elanee—said, "Are you _sure_ you're Duncan?"

"I never said I was!"

"But you have to be," the tiefling said. Her voice was high, and nasally, and she sounded almost pleading. "You own the Sunken Flagon, right?"

"Are yeh _sure_ this is who—?" the dwarf said, turning his head to look at Laura.

Duncan followed his gaze and apparently took notice of the girl for the first time. "Oh, hello there," he said, to the back of her head. "This isn't about money, is it?"

Laura met Sal's eyes for a moment, clearly torn between amusement and something akin to disappointment, and Sal shrugged. She turned on her stool and said, "No."

"Ah! Well, then. Name's Duncan Farlong. Were you looking for me?"

She looked him over—not judgmental, but not forgiving either—and said, "I think so."

"Do I know you? Don't think I've seen a pretty face like yours before—"

"I don't know," she said. "Perhaps."

Duncan frowned; Sal stifled another snort, this time of amusement, at the bland expression on the woman's face. "Well, give us a hint, then."

She waited a beat longer, and then said, "My name is Laura Farthing, and I've come to ask you about a silver shard you are said to have in your possession."

There was a long pause, in which Duncan's face changed expression more rapidly than it took him to pass out after his tenth tankard. The other three strangers looked on expectantly, and the woman just waited.

"Laura? Daeghun's little Laura?" Duncan croaked finally. Then he shook his head and said, "Well, not so little anymore! You take after your father, I see—but you have something of your mother in your face. That's why you look familiar. Well, then! How is old Daeghun?"

Sal had only heard Daeghun's name mentioned once or twice in his years at the Flagon, and usually only followed by an oath or expletive that suggested he held far less fondness for him than his voice carried at the moment. "Little Laura" shrugged and said, "He is well. And your shard?"

"Did he send you all the way here for that? Figures," Duncan said, looking a bit at a loss for what to do. "Y'know, last time I saw you, you were just a babe in arms. And look at you now…definitely some of Esmerelle in there."

She stiffened, just a little, and then relaxed into a small smile and stood, holding out her hand. "It's nice to meet you, Uncle Duncan."

He pushed her hand aside in favor of hugging her; surprised, Sal glanced at the others to take in their reaction. They seemed to think this completely a matter of course and were waiting for something more important to happen. Meanwhile, Duncan had released his niece—though she didn't look a thing like him; maybe she was related to him on his mother's side?—and said, "Now what's all this about the shard? It's just a piece of silver junk, you know."

"Father sent me to double-check on that," she said. "There seems to be some…doubt as to that claim."

"Well, sure, I guess we can check," he said, "but what brings it up? That was years ago."

She paused, and said, "West Harbor was attacked a few weeks ago by—githyanki?" She glanced at the others, who nodded, and finished, "and Father sent me to retrieve the shard and then here to find out what I could about yours."

"West Harbor? Attacked?" Duncan shook his head. "The last time…well, you don't need to me to tell you about that. I took my shard and Daeghun took his, and I got mine examined when I got here, but there wasn't anything special about them…"

The unlikely relatives were soon deep in a conversation about shards and magic and other things that sounded more like adventuring ideas than practical, bar-related business. Sal sighed and gently coaxed the group to a table while the patrons started arriving—among them Sand, who was quickly drawn in as a consultant—and he started serving them. It was the middle of the week, which meant business wasn't exactly hopping, but there were still enough people that when a minor explosion went off in the corner of the room the line to get out the door was more a mob than an orderly group.

Furious, Sal went to give Duncan a piece of his mind concerning Sand's experiments when he noticed that all three of them were pushing themselves off the floor. "Well, it apparently doesn't like being scried," Sand said.

Sal didn't get a chance to open his mouth—next thing he knew Duncan and Sand were advising Laura to either throw in her lot with the City Watch (a dubious proposition) or with Caleb and his lot (what were they_thinking_?), and then Duncan was offering to let her and her companions stay free of charge and with access to all the free alcohol they could desire, and then he was ordering Sal to serve up a round on the house to anyone who hadn't been scared away.

Laura followed him as he went back around the bar; she reclaimed her stool and leaned against it, watching him mutter under his breath as he set to work filling Duncan's order. "I don't want to impose," she said. "He's just very generous, I think."

"Too much for his own good," Sal snapped. "Not that I mind having you here, miss, but—"

"I don't want to stay for too long," she said, "but I'm starting to wonder if I have a choice."

"Homesick?" he asked.

She shrugged and accepted her mug. "I'm Laura," she said, a belated introduction.

"I know. Sal," he said, shaking her hand. "Might as well get used to it, I guess. But if you lot start disrupting business…"

They both glanced at the dwarf and the tiefling, who were currently celebrating the free alcohol, and she shook her head. "I'll do my best," she said. "Cheers."


	2. Chapter 2

**Title: **Not Yet by Lightning

**Chapter:** Two

**Author:** Jade Sabre

**Notes:** By completed, I did in fact mean _completed_, and hopefully I will stick with a weekly updating schedule. This being the second week, I hereby present to you chapter two.

The title of my fic comes from the poem "Struck, was I, not yet by Lightning –" by Emily Dickinson.

**Disclaimer:** I don't own or any of its sequels or expansions, or any of the characters contained herein, aside from my PC, who was created on a Bioware engine and thus probably therefore partially belongs to them too. I also didn't write Emily Dickinson's poetry, nor have I ever used the name Emily Dickinson as a pseudonym. Though now that I think about it, that would be, in fact, an awesome pseudonym.

* * *

Struck, was I, not yet by Lightning —  
Lightning — lets away  
Power to perceive His Process  
With Vitality.

Maimed — was I — yet not by Venture —  
Stone of stolid Boy —  
Nor a Sportsman's Peradventure —  
Who mine Enemy?

Robbed — was I — intact to Bandit —  
All my Mansion torn —  
Sun — withdrawn to Recognition —  
Furthest shining — done —

Yet was not the foe — of any —  
Not the smallest Bird  
In the nearest Orchard dwelling  
Be of Me — afraid.

Most — I love the Cause that slew Me.  
Often as I die  
Its beloved Recognition  
Holds a Sun on Me —

Best — at Setting — as is Nature's —  
Neither witnessed Rise  
Till the infinite Aurora  
In the other's eyes.

* * *

**2**

When she met Khelgar, she was a fellow traveler on the road who happened to be good in a fight. The dwarf tended to speak at great length about the battles he'd endured, making their conversations a stream of information versus the occasional "oh" or question about technique. They were companions, comrades, equals, and little was needed in order to keep such a partnership working.

When Neeshka came along, she was the savior in muddy armor with a questionable taste in traveling companions. The thief was more concerned with insulting the dwarf at every turn, but her gratitude towards her new leader was such that she never questioned more than the other woman allowed. She made up for the gap in her curiosity by asking inane questions such as "What's your favorite color?" and received contemplative answers in return. She was so happy to be a part of something she didn't particularly care what that something was.

Elanee was different. Elanee had a vague idea of the past, having watched their leader since the time she was young. The leader in question—for such she became, upon discovering their band turned to four, and that the other three turned to _her_ for answers—was wary, but the druidess seemed content with what she had seen.

It was when Elanee joined the group that Laura's talents became apparent. The shortcut through the Maiden's Glade led to the discovery of a huge, raging bear, which took Neeshka out with one solid blow to the head. Leaving the other two to deal with their adversary, Laura scampered over to the thief, fingers fumbling with something as she tried desperately to remember the words—she'd never had to heal _during_ battle—and placed her hands over the wound. The familiar bright blue light glowed under her hands, and Neeshka's eyes opened as she exhaled with relief. Sparing only a quick smile and a pat on the shoulder, she stood and dove back into the battle.

No one mentioned the incident afterwards, but she was able to heal the others without trepidation. Khelgar was only too happy to have a healer who could mend his broken teeth and Neeshka didn't care at all and Elanee seemed to think that healing was healing, however it came. And Laura…Laura was careful, but she was relieved to be able to exercise her abilities instead of watching her friends bleed.

**o-o-o**

**o-o-o**

She never took Qara anywhere. She took an instant dislike to the younger girl (which made her a child, really, and unsuited to adventuring) and thought leaving her with Duncan was punishment enough. She only saw her when they had a break between missions for the City Watch, and she mostly ignored the burning resentment in those sharp green eyes. Qara hated her for leaving her with Duncan almost as much as she hated being in Duncan's debt in the first place. In retaliation, the sorceress agitated everyone, and Laura didn't feel like giving her any more ammunition. Besides, she had to be careful in Neverwinter, though even when she was caught people assumed the usual deity—because of the uniform, she guessed.

Grobnar—Grobnar was oblivious to everything, and able to heal himself besides. By this point it was becoming clearer that Laura was developing into something more than she'd ever meant to be—the bard took one look at her and asked to follow, which had to be some sort of sign because bards only followed the action. (Granted, Grobnar found the flight patterns of butterflies as exciting as epic battles, so it was not, perhaps, the greatest compliment or confirmation.) She let him tag along and ask his questions, only answering the ones that she thought needed answering, often halting halfway through because he had found something else to occupy his attention.

It was Casavir—of course it was—who first thought to question her. Although he led his own group and was their guide to Logram's lair, he fell under her command easily enough, listening when she shouted battle orders and charging in wherever she pointed him. He fought well and kept to himself whenever they had to stop, but she had a feeling that he was watching her, sometimes, though he was far too polite to admit to it. His gaze wasn't as much judgmental as it was…sad, and occasionally curious.

It wasn't until they were climbing back down the mountain and had stopped for the night, bruised and bloody but undeniably triumphant, that his quiet reserve broke. Granted, she provoked him—half-purposefully, half because Neeshka had done something awful to her ankle that needed serious attention—but it still didn't help when he said, "I—I was wondering…"

"Hm?" she said, not really paying attention, though she realized the others were. Her gaze was more focused on setting Neeshka's ankle to rights without getting lashed in the head by her tail.

"I could heal that," he said, slowly.

She knew paladins could lay their hands on injuries and heal them through divine channeling, and that it was fairly effective, but Neeshka provided the obvious answer. "No way! It'll probably hurt worse if you do it. Laura's got it under control."

She couldn't spare a glance to see if his expression was at all hurt—doubtful—but he said, in his calm, measured tones, "Are you trained as a healer?"

"Yes," she said, closing her eyes and feeling everything line up, slowly but surely. She wasn't going to give him anything he didn't ask for first. Neeshka hissed at the moment she felt everything go right, and she immediately cast the strongest healing spell she had, mending the torn ligaments and muscle, feeling it strengthen under her hand as the glow of the spell faded.

She sat back on her haunches and dusted off her hands. "How's that?"

"Fantastic," Neeshka said, gently flexing her foot. "Thanks!"

She smiled a little at Neeshka's unbounded enthusiasm, and moved on to Khelgar. They'd bound the wound in his arm to stop the bleeding, as Neeshka's injury had been far more incapacitating, and now that she had ensured Neeshka was all right, she thankfully still had magic left to heal him as well.

"Whom do you serve?" Casavir asked, as if he couldn't contain himself anymore.

She paused in unwinding the bandage, but Khelgar answered for her. (It was funny, how automatically her companions rushed to defend her, even though they occasionally made the situation worse instead of better. She couldn't figure why they so freely gave their loyalty to her, but she was touched by their support all the same.) "Neverwinter, o' course," the dwarf said, his voice giving no indication that the salve she was dabbing into his wound caused him any pain. "She already told yeh she worked for the Watch."

"That's…not what I meant," the paladin said, his voice slightly pinched. Laura had noticed that the deeper his voice went, the more formal he was acting. She hadn't heard him sound truly passionate since they had first met, and his voice was anxious and he spoke quickly, trying to persuade his sergeant—Katriona—to join the Greycloaks.

The pause was longer this time; she healed Khelgar's arm, the light more obvious this time. She glanced at him across the fire, noting that the shadows made him look _old_. He was obviously several years her elder (though she'd been mistaken for older than she was, usually by patrons of Duncan's fine establishment), but he'd never looked quite so aged as he did in that moment, looking down at the ground, his head hanging and his shoulders sagging.

He looked up and caught her gaze—immediately his posture straightened, but she'd seen (though the others hadn't noticed, or didn't care), and after a moment she said, "Healing is healing."

"Yes," he said, "but there are troublesome allegiances—"

"What's your problem?" Neeshka demanded.

"I—" He paused, as if trying to phrase it properly. Finally he said, "Your leader is a priestess, and I was wondering who she served."

There was a long pause, and then Khelgar said, "Huh. Is that what it is?"

"Well, duh," Neeshka answered, "but it's not like she's some kind of goody-goody cleric or something. The healing doesn't make me itch at all."

Laura bit her lip to keep from smiling. "I suspect," she said calmly, straightening up her healing gear, "that that is exactly his problem."

"Not problem, no," he said, almost too quickly. "I have seen you in action, and you clearly…I judge you based on your actions, which are true, but I cannot help but wonder if in the future…"

The future. That sounded like she'd picked up another stray. She wondered why he would want to join her crew, when he already had one of his own—people who _depended_ on him—but he was good in a fight, and she didn't want to dissuade him if this was what he had decided upon. She didn't answer, though she was aware that both Neeshka and Khelgar were watching her too, out of simple curiosity.

Finally Casavir said, "I cannot imagine why you would feel the need for secrecy when the goal of most holy clerics is to propagate their faith."

Ah. He had a most decided point. "It's more about Neverwinter," she said finally. "I was warned that it was a heavily Tyrran city, and that I might be frowned upon for my—"

"It is not as if you chose it," Casavir said.

She flicked her gaze over to him, startled; he met her eyes, steady, and so she smiled at the mutual knowledge they shared—it was not as if anyone could choose. "No," she said. "I serve Hoar the Doombringer."

"Tha's cheerful," Khelgar remarked.

Neeshka frowned. "I don't know much outside of infernal things—_not_ that I worship anyone like that, I'm just your average Tymora fan—"

"Revenge," Casavir said, thoughtfully. "The few clerics I have met of his order have been much older."

"I know," she said.

He stared at her and she stared right back, and then he seemed to remember himself and withdrew into a more formal shell, his voice dropping half an octave. "Your motivations are your own. I do not foresee any serious conflicts."

She smiled, but it was more sarcastic than anything else, and then she said, "We need to rest. I'll take first watch."

"Suit yourself," Khelgar said, and promptly passed out on his bedroll. Neeshka curled up like a cat and fell into her light sleep soon afterwards. Casavir readied himself more slowly, watching her as if waiting to see if she would say anything else, but Laura had nothing more to say on the subject—he followed Tyr, and she followed Hoar, and neither of them could _stop_ doing what they were doing. He recognized that, and she knew that it was the best she could hope for, and that if he was serious about staying, he'd make his own peace with it. In the meantime, she had more pressing concerns, and she turned her thoughts towards the problem of Blacklake.


	3. Chapter 3

**Title: **Not Yet by Lightning

**Chapter:** Three

**Author: **Jade Sabre

**Notes:** Again, I have to thank DarthAmmonite for _The Smell of Destiny_, on which I blame this chapter.

Reviews are, as always, greatly appreciated.

**Disclaimer:** I don't own Neverwinter Nights, or any of its sequels or expansions, or any of the characters contained herein, aside from my PC, who was created on a Bioware engine and thus probably therefore partially belongs to them too.

* * *

**3**

Sand took one final look around his shop, mentally going through his closing time checklist. Dangerous alchemical ingredients properly stoppered, check. Scrolls in alphabetical order, with no stray edges waiting to be wrinkled, check. Window properly dusty to discourage attention, check. Candles extinguished, check. Cat food set out—check, but there was a lack of feline interest in the food. This was most unusual.

Sand frowned, his eyes scanning the shop for any sign of his fluffy familiar. He hoped Jaral wasn't out in the alleys trying to impress the female cats; his neighbors tended to throw things through his window when that happened. Pinching the bridge of his nose, he took a deep whiff, automatically sorting through the lingering, powerful scents of his alchemical work until he honed in on the slightest odor of posturing tomcat. Sighing, he began preparing a spell to fortify glass, when he opened one eye and noticed Jaral pacing and hissing in front of the door.

"For Mystra's—" He stalked over to the cat, who deliberately ignored him, his tail twitching as he stared at the door. "Hurry up and eat. I would prefer to leave sooner rather than—"

The door opened, and Sand had to suppress a strong urge to hiss himself. Sir Nevalle, dashingly handsome (if you could find it within yourself to consider a human attractive) knight, member of the Neverwinter Nine, and Sand's erstwhile superior, shook his head of blonde hair as he stomped into the store. He side-stepped Jaral's attempt to rend a hole in his pants through sheer habit, his attention clearly elsewhere. "Bloody _hell_, Sand, what's going on?"

"I'm sorry?" Sand said, adopting the silky voice he affected to prove his subservience.

"You'd better be," Nevalle said, shoving aside what appeared to be empty bottles but was, in fact, a carefully outlined display of the potion vials sold in the store. Either missing or choosing to ignore Sand's scowl, he leaned against the ledge and said, "What, exactly, has been going on around here?"

"What, exactly, are you talking about?" Sand said. "I'm afraid you'll have to be more specific."

"The Docks, Sand. The district you specifically requested in order to exercise your duties more effectively." The knight's voice leveled as his immediate distress settled into what Sand thought of as his perpetually uptight displeasure. Granted, he only saw Nevalle outside of the castle when something had gone wrong, but there was no denying that he was possibly stricter than Sand himself when it came to affairs of security. Sand didn't have the benefit of being able to protect himself physically, either.

"Ah. Have my reports been unsatisfactory? I've tried to keep a running tab on this recent push the City Watch has—"

"You failed to mention that the push has been _single-handedly led_," Nevalle said in a strained, pinched tone.

"Hardly 'single-handed'—"

"Do you not understand that this means we have an extraordinarily powerful, potentially dangerous individual running around the city with little to no supervision?"

"She's a member of the Watch," Sand said patiently. "She's sworn her oath, she's performed her duty most admirably, according to Captain Brelaina—"

"I've read Brelaina's reports as well," Nevalle snapped. "But she failed to mention that this individual's—"

"Laura Farthing."

"—purpose was to infiltrate Blacklake."

"I beg your pardon?"

He pushed off the ledge and began pacing, still managing to avoid Jaral's vicious swipes; hissing, the cat stalked back to its food dish, offended. "Brelaina's latest report. The lieutenant comes back from Old Owl Well with a former soldier of Neverwinter in tow, conducts a raid on another warehouse—again failing to inform Sir Darmon, who again shows up too late—"

"Is that who's at the Flagon tonight?" Sand winced at the black look Nevalle shot him. "I haven't had a chance to conduct my daily sweep—"

"Yes, Darmon's letting the men 'relax' again. I've just been to see him. The lieutenant filed her report—a routine raid, clearing out the last of whatever crime lord's dregs were still there—and Brelaina cleared her to visit a man named Aldanon in Blacklake—a secluded loremaster, from what I could gather." He stopped pacing and said, his dark look becoming slowly murderous, "You don't seem surprised by any of this."

"No," Sand said. "I included it in my report two months ago. If you look, you'll see very clearly that I mentioned meeting a human girl claiming to be Duncan Farlong's niece, who was hoping to meet with the loremaster, and that I suggested she join the Watch, which she subsequently did." He made a subtle show of re-straightening his scrolls, an excuse to back away.

"Be that as it may, do you know _why_?" Nevalle's look was turning downright poisonous, filling the air with an acrid odor to match. "You wouldn't happen to know why Darmon's men, doing a sweep of the warehouse after the lieutenant departed, discovered githyanki corpses?"

Sand swallowed. "Did they?"

"Oh, yes." Nevalle closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose again. "Do you have any _idea_ what Lord Nasher's reaction will be when I tell him his potential champion is attracting extra-planar attention?"

"She's not alone, you know," Sand said. "She has the paladin, and a dwarf and a tiefling and Mystra only knows what else—"

"Yes, but you know my lord. He likes having a symbol, and he found the news that the Watch was doing well pleasing, and directed me to learn as much as I could about the soldiers responsible. At which point I discovered it was _one_ person, at which point I ventured to the Sunken Flagon, where I found Darmon watching his men celebrate and worrying about the deactivated portal he found in the warehouse."

"A portal?" Sand mentally ran through all of the recent reading he'd done, calculating how much of his understanding would benefit from having a portal to work with. "Perhaps I should—"

"Darmon already contacted the Cloaktower with a request for an investigation," Nevalle said, not a warning tone, but almost sly. "Unless you would like to offer them your services…"

Annoyed, Sand ignored him and said, "So why, exactly, did you feel a need to come and berate me for not providing information that I clearly did, in fact, provide?"

"You failed to mention that the githyanki were following—Farthing? Is that what you said her name was?"

"Laura Farthing, yes. And she mentioned there had been an attack on her home village when she arrived—"

"So this isn't her first encounter with the gith?"

Sand paused, trying to remember the details of the conversation. His memory was impeccable, but in a selective sort of way: he could memorize countless ingredients and directions and invocations and recall them in a few seconds, but personal details like names, faces, and the mundane goings-on of people's lives tended to slip beneath his radar. "I don't believe she ever said as much," he said finally, "but judging from the nature of her quest, it wouldn't surprise me if she had encountered them before."

"And what is her quest?" Nevalle's earlier poison still lingered in the air, though now he smelled much more of impatience, a rather salty scent.

"She came into Neverwinter bearing a silver shard that her father had asked to have examined. I had examined it years ago, to no avail—it appeared to be simply a shard of plain silver. Duncan has another shard exactly like it, which I also examined and found to be completely null."

"But?"

Sand decided to skip the details of his recent examination—Nevalle had little patience for the technical details of magic—and said merely, "When she brought the shard to me I examined it and discovered that it had a faint magical aura emanating from it, one that resisted my attempts to scry it, and one that grew much stronger when Duncan brought out his and they put them together. I don't know what they were; that's why I suggested she visit Aldanon."

The human leaned against the ledge again and crossed his arms. "So in other words, we won't know any more on the subject until she's through with Aldanon."

"Probably."

He sighed, which cleared away most of the scents around him, leaving only the ones Sand normally associated with him: loyalty, a youthful and fresh scent, and duty, the flat, dry odor of a sword on a whetstone. Sand found neither of these particularly aromatic, and did his very best not to tap his foot with impatience while the other man loitered.

"What's she like?" Nevalle asked.

"Too young for you." Sand almost cursed his inordinately quick mind, but the expression on his superior's face was almost worth it. Hastily he added, "She seemed like a very calm, balanced woman. Human, yes, but combat-trained, very pragmatic, always got right to the point and cut through Duncan's chatter whilst managing to avoid offense—something even I find difficult to do."

"You don't care about insulting people."

"True." Sand managed to kill the slight smile on his face, though he could have sworn Nevalle had one as well. "The few times she has come into my shop she has been very pleasant and polite. A little prying, perhaps, but she's looking for answers."

"So you don't think she did something intentionally to anger the gith?"

"No," Sand said, without hesitation. "I believe their attacks would be tied to the shard, and not to her personally."

Nevalle sighed again and straightened. "Well, at least I'll have some good news for my lord. As for you, I expect a full report on the lieutenant tomorrow. And I want you to keep a close watch on her."

Sand raised an eyebrow. "Spying on your subordinates, are we?"

"She single-handedly—"

"She has help."

"—won Old Owl Well back for Neverwinter. She's gearing up to be the city's next hero, and I want to make sure that her record is as spotless as possible. Daily reports, Sand."

Sand sighed through his nose and bowed mockingly. "As the glory of Neverwinter commands, I'm sure."

Nevalle's lip twisted, whether in a smile or a sneer he couldn't tell (though judging by the man's usual response to attacks on Neverwinter, the latter), and he departed. Sand immediately began straightening the jumbled vials, his mind already racing through the ins and outs of his new assignment. On the one hand, following the exploits of the savior of the Docks promised to be interesting—on the other, she seemed to attract attention from all corners, most of which he would prefer to avoid himself. Also, there was the little matter that actually having a chance to observe her would probably involve lurking at the Flagon on a daily basis, which would involve dealing with Duncan and his ilk, and the overpowering odor of alcohol that lingered even on the establishment's doorstep.

Sand frowned, then felt something brush his leg. Jaral weaved around his robes, so he picked up the cat, who hissed a little before settling against his shoulder and purring. "I don't like it either," he said, stroking the cat's head. "I don't like it at all."


	4. Chapter 4

Title: Not Yet by Lightning

**Title:** Not Yet by Lightning

**Chapter:** Four

**Author: **Jade Sabre

**Notes:** It occurs to me that I might have said this earlier, but obviously this fic isn't intended to be a retelling of the plot, but rather a series of connected one-shots, anchored by the main plot of the game but hopefully forming their own subplot (or two).

**Disclaimer:** I don't own Neverwinter Nights, or any of its sequels or expansions, or any of the characters contained herein, aside from my PC, who was created on a Bioware engine and thus probably therefore partially belongs to them too.

* * *

**4**

"So?"

"How'd it go?"

"Are yeh all right? Shandra said—"

"A squire! How terribly exciting!"

"My lady, it is good to see you well."

"I don't understand why—"

"Did you tell them—"

"I thought perhaps we'd start—"

"Shut up!" Duncan yelled, putting an end to the chatter. The anxious assortment of beings before the door parted, revealing Laura, looking a little dazed, followed by Sand. Duncan stepped forward and put an arm around his niece's shoulders, steering her towards a large round table in the back of the common room. Sal was already there, mugs of ale at the ready.

She sat down as deliberately as ever, seeming to come back to herself a little as the others settled in; Sand drew up a chair, much to Duncan's surprise, though he delicately declined any of "Duncan's cheap swill." Neeshka, tail twitching with excitement said, "So?"

"So I'm a squire now," Laura said, her voice flat as always. "And I'm going on trial, and Sand's my new lawyer."

"Sand?" Duncan demanded. He hadn't taken a seat at her table—this was Laura's adventure, after all—but he always stood nearby. "What good can—"

"The knight—"

"Sir Nevalle," Sand supplied. "Also a member of the Neverwinter Nine."

"He's a priss," said Qara dismissively. "A shame, 'cause he's really pretty."

"Here, here!" Neeshka said, clanking her mug against Qara's and spilling a little on the table. The candles in the room flared.

"—seemed to think fighting Luskans would be of special interest to him."

"Oh, certainly," Sand said, as silky as always. "Hated enemy of Neverwinter, overly arrogant hoarders of knowledge, etc. etc."

"Shandra said—"

"Yes, I was attacked," Laura said, her lips drawing into the tight line that served as her unamused smile. Khelgar looked as though he were about to press her for every detail, but then she added, "We held them off. Sir…"

"Nevalle."

"Nevalle said they were Luskan assassins." She shrugged. "Frankly, I was more worried when the gith were chasing me; these men can't be much worse."

"Still," Casavir said, "it would be wise—"

"Luskan assassins, eh? I wouldn't be too sure."

They all looked up in surprise to see Bishop ambling over, a mug of his own in hand. He smiled at them all—more a sneer, but there was a black mirth to it—and said, "They're a nasty bunch. Not exactly human."

"Something you have in common with them, Bishop?" Duncan said, glaring at him.

"Watch it, half-breed." He looked around the table of upturned faces, carrying varying levels of disgust or suspicion, and said, "No need to look so surprised. I said I was staying, didn't I? Do you have to have an invitation to these pow-wows?"

"You said what, now?" Duncan said, gritting his teeth.

Before Bishop could answer, his niece's cool, calm voice said, "He offered to stay, and I accepted."

"You did _what_?" Duncan turned to her. "Are you insane? Were you not listening to a thing I said?"

He could feel Bishop's murderous gaze on him—as if it wasn't his prerogative to tell who he wanted; as if he would have exposed his niece to such a tale—but Laura simply said, "If he wants to stay, he can stay."

"Laura—"

"My first task as squire," she said, "is to find evidence to defend myself against the Luskan accusations. Whoever wants to come can come; we're heading for…"

"Ember," Sand said. "Best to start at the scene of the crime."

"This is absolutely ridiculous," Elanee said. "Why do they think—"

"It's politics, duh," Neeshka said. "One of those things that civilization brought down on us."

Laura sat back and listened to her companions talk, trading ideas and insults and plans, often in the same breath. She was tired, but had a full night's rest to look forward to (barring any surprise abductions—though she was pretty sure Shandra would be able to hold her own now), and she enjoyed hearing what the others had to say. They were a diverse group, and she was somewhat gratified and more than a little bemused that they chose to rally around her.

Gradually the others drifted off to bed; she nursed her drink, not yet willing to go to her room, but longing for solitude. She was behind on her prayers again, which left a sort of dark nagging in her gut, a barbed hook reminding her of her obligations. Obligations to her god, and lately to the people around her, and now to Neverwinter too—she didn't like feeling tied down to any one group or structure, other than her faith, but the current situation made it seem unavoidable.

She didn't like not having options, either.

"Contemplating your death?"

She didn't look up from the table as her newest addition slid into the chair next to hers. "No," she said. "Responsibility."

"Bah," was his response, and he took a long swig from his mug.

She glanced sideways at him, a new thought creeping into her mind; she waited, then said, "What's your opinion?"

He went still for a moment, and then set his mug on the table. "On what? Death or responsibility?"

"The trial," she said. "You didn't seem to have much to say about it."

She didn't mention that his words only ever served to antagonize someone, whether it was lewd comments for Shandra or baby-murdering suggestions for Casavir. He wanted to make himself an outsider, and so far he was doing a very good job. She had listened to her uncle and watched the man in battle, and knew that she was dealing with something dark and dangerous; half the struggle, then, was to keep him from knowing exactly how much she knew.

"Well, you know," he said, "legal stuff isn't exactly my thing."

"But you have an opinion."

"What makes you think that?" he asked, cutting his eyes at her.

"You have an opinion about everything else," she said, lightly.

He conceded this with a half-nod, returning his gaze to the table. "Are you seriously asking for my thoughts, or are you just making conversation?"

She held up her hand and started counting off on her fingers. "Neeshka's initial reaction to the word 'law' is to suggest 'running away.' Shandra's a farmgirl, Casavir thinks we should put our faith in his system, Grobnar and Qara are both insane, Khelgar wants to charge down Luskan's walls, and Elanee still isn't entirely sure where Luskan _is_. You and Sand are the only people I know who have any firsthand experience with the city—"

"I don't remember ever saying that."

She paused, then looked him in the eye and said, "You called Luskan your territory. You don't grow to be so familiar with an area without spending time in it. I don't know or care what you or Sand had to do with the city; what matters is that you have the experience that everyone else lacks."

His eyes held a strange mix of suspicion, murderous intent, and respect; after a moment he nodded and said, "That's true in more than one area."

She lifted her eyebrows and said, "What's your opinion?"

"My opinion?" He inhaled through his nose—a long, deep sniff she was growing accustomed to—and said, "I say you skip the trial and kill that ambassador of theirs."

"Brutal."

"But efficient. And straight to the point. It's the only language the Luskans are going to understand."

She shrugged. "Supposing I do this, will it make the attacks stop?"

"You're considering it?"

She met his gaze again and said, in as flat a voice as she had ever managed, "She's part of a plot that involved an entire village being razed to the ground for purely political motives." She could feel her hands clenching around her mug, the tremors starting in her fingers, and willed herself to be calm. Looking back at her drink, she said, "I would gladly see her dead in a heartbeat."

She focused her gaze on the liquid, breathing deeply, and after a moment he said, "They'd probably just find someone else to send after you, yeah. But eventually you'd kill someone so important they'd leave you alone."

"Time-consuming."

"Well, yeah. I mean, if you wanted to skip all that…"

She was suddenly aware that he was sitting beside her; she had realized it, obviously, but there was a difference between knowing he was sitting beside her and being _aware_ of it, aware of the fact that he was aware and was using this mutual awareness to his advantage. His legs were stretched out under the table and his knee, just barely, so lightly it was as if he was going to let her pretend she imagined it, brushed against hers.

"I know plenty of back trails in the woods around here. We could go away…camp for a year or two…"

She lifted her mug to her lips and took a drink to give her an excuse to swallow. She set the mug down and said, "Is that seriously an offer, or are you being snide?"

"You don't believe me?"

She resisted the temptation to look at him and merely said, "Somehow I would expect you to aim such a comment at Shandra."

"She's not worth the effort of taking away."

"And I am?" She didn't mean to say it. It was a stupid thing to say, his knee was bumping into hers, she had only had one mug of ale but she hadn't eaten anything and she was tired, and she was horribly afraid that she would start blushing and everything would be ruined. She couldn't afford to lose control. She _couldn't_.

She _knew_ he was looking at her, and not just his normal up-and-down glance, or his predatory stare, knew that he was taking his time considering what little of her there was to see above the table, covered in armor. She knew it as surely as she knew he was intentionally pressing her, as he was deliberately dropping his voice when he said, "Maybe. What would you say, if I thought you were?"

Another woman, she thought, might be able to get away with a flirtatious "yes," a sort of flippant, casual dismissal of his suit. She didn't know how to be flippant. She didn't know how to say "no" without letting on to the fact that she'd never rejected anyone before. She was in over her head and she knew it, and as soon as she recognized that fact she set about finding a way out.

"It would depend," she said, in her usual measured tone, "on what kind of woods you were talking about."

He folded his arms across his chest and leaned back in his chair, his leg still touching hers. "You have a preference?"

"I'm fond of swamps," she said, honestly.

He snorted. "Not a lot of solid ground to hole away on."

"No," she said, "but at least it's reliably unstable."

"I'll see what I can do," he said, "though that's looking farther south than I really care to go."

"Am I worth it?" she asked.

He glanced at her and she glanced right back, and he said, "Maybe."

"Let me know when you make up your mind," she said. "Until then, I have a trial to prepare for."

"Ah, well," he said, and his leg shifted away from her; she breathed an internal sigh of relief and pushed her chair back, getting ready to stand. "Maybe it wasn't meant to be. Besides," he said, "wouldn't want to make the paladin jealous."

"He has his faith to keep him warm," she said, and pushed herself to her feet.

He laughed, not really mocking or sneering any more than was usual, and said, "Cruel, biting wit. Warms my heart."

"That's not to say," she said, "I don't have mine."

His laughter stopped abruptly; she lifted an eyebrow at him, and left, not waiting to see what his expression was. She already knew he was watching her; she didn't care to see if the look in his eyes was different or not.


	5. Chapter 5

**Title:** Not Yet by Lightning

**Chapter:** Five

**Author:** Jade Sabre

**Notes:** Reviews are always welcome. First, I should point out that my sense of time and travel time is incredibly skewed, so if the durations of trips and the like seem funny, they most likely are because I actually don't know how long it would take to travel from Neverwinter to Port Llast and back again. Also, while I have done some research on the subject of the gods of Faerûn, most of my knowledge comes from the game, and so I've invented a few details to fill in the gaps. So if you run across something uncanonical, know that it's probably because I've never actually played a D&D campaign set in the Realms and thus am not obsessed with getting every detail right. 

**Disclaimer:** I don't own Neverwinter Nights, or any of its sequels or expansions, or any of the characters contained herein, aside from my PC, who was created on a Bioware engine and thus probably therefore partially belongs to them too.

* * *

**5**

Laura released a quiet sigh, letting it take her tension with it, as she sat before her dinner. It was a quiet night at the Flagon; her companions were the only people in the common room, amusing themselves in various ways as the night slowly wore on. She'd spent the entire day with Sand organizing the evidence from her trip to Ember. The elf had been very positive about what they had gathered, but he was also already requisitioning supplies for second trip to Port Llast. For now, though, she was going to sit and enjoy her dinner in relative quiet. Sal had given her the soup with a pitying look in his eye, told her that Duncan was already in bed, and left her to manage the crowd.

They seemed to be behaving themselves, though. Sand had gone home for the night, and Qara had already gone to bed (though it was unlikely she would wake before midday). Neeshka, too, was missing from the fireside group, either in bed or (more probable) out breaking the law for her own personal profit. Khelgar was humoring Grobnar—or perhaps the other way around—with a raucous tale in Dwarven that had them both bursting into laughter—Khelgar's deep guffaws contrasting with Grobnar's high-pitched giggles in a strange sort of harmony. Shandra, Casavir, and Elanee all sat around a table near the fire, doing something that appeared to involve cards. And Bishop hovered behind them, much to Shandra's apparent disgust.

She took a sip of her soup, savoring it in her mouth before swallowing and dipping her spoon in again. She stared down into her soup, centering her mind on absolute nothing, blankness, mechanically eating as she rested her thoughts. It was the closest thing she could get to a catnap. She wanted to eat alone in her room, but the others had a tendency to come find her when they hadn't seen her eat all day, and she would rather give them her presence than have them invade her personal space. It was a small sacrifice to renew their faith in her. She set down her spoon and took a deep breath, holding it for a slow count before releasing it, letting it take her thoughts with her. She could feel herself relaxing and took another breath before picking her spoon up again.

"Hey, you," Shandra said, her voice clipped. Laura looked up and saw the older woman coming over and sitting at her table, the expression on her face tight with anger. She flicked her gaze to the other table and saw Casavir lecturing Bishop, whose attention was focused on a knife, and Elanee gathering up the cards.

She withheld another sigh and said, "Yes?" before going back to her soup.

"Oh, nothing. Just thought I'd come give you a little company before—you can take that comment and stick it up your ass!" she snapped, twisting to glare at Bishop. Laura hadn't heard what he said, which she supposed was for the best, and didn't have to look to imagine the smirk on his face. She also didn't have to hear him to imagine what he said in reply, because whatever it was, it made Shandra slam her hands on the table and push her chair back.

"Shandra," Casavir said, his deep voice expanding to fill the whole room, melting into the shadows to fill them with his warmth. He had a good voice for command. In weaker moments, Laura sometimes envied him.

Shandra glared murder over her shoulder, but relented and pulled her chair back to the table. Casavir said something else to Bishop, who shrugged and moved back to his shadowy corner by the fireplace, and then turned to leave the common room, walking by Laura's table.

"Why don't you pull up a chair and join us?" Shandra said, her voice just a little too loud. Laura pressed her lips together.

Casavir paused and looked between the two of them. "Thank you," he said, "but I believe I will go to bed. The hour is late, and we all need our rest."

Laura could feel his concerned gaze on her and relaxed her face. "Thank you, Casavir," she said quietly. "Good night."

He waited a moment more, and then moved on. Khelgar and Grobnar, still deep in conversation, seem to take this as a sign to depart, and stomped their way through the common room, breaking into a loud, probably lewd, song as they went. Laura shut her eyes, though it didn't help shut out the noise, and took another sip of soup.

"Loud, aren't they?" Shandra said. Laura glanced at her and, after a moment, nodded but didn't reply. The other woman seemed somewhat discouraged by this, but she soon began a whole conversation with herself about some funny story Grobnar had told her recently. Laura, feeling somewhat obligated to pretend interest, nodded and made noncommittal comments in what she deemed to be appropriate places, her mind wandering to its focused place of rest.

Shandra abruptly stopped talking; Laura looked up and saw Bishop ambling his way towards their table. He stretched as he passed and said, "Well, looks like it's past bedtime for all the good little girls and boys."

"Are you including yourself in that category? 'cause if you—"

Laura watched them both, her face expressionless, gaze fixed on a place between them.

"Oh, no," he said. "All the good little boys and girls are already in bed. Makes me wonder what _you're _still doing up."

"I'm talking with Laura."

"Uh-huh." He glanced at her, but she refused to look back. "Well, if you good little girls got a little lost on the way back to your beds, _mine's_ always open." Shandra opened her mouth. "Don't worry, you don't have to say anything. I'll be waiting."

"If you think I would even _consider_—"

"You clearly are," he pointed out, and her face turned bright red. He ran his tongue along the inside of his bottom lip and said, "Think about it."

Shandra moved her mouth, but the red in her face was from more than embarrassment, and her rage made her incoherent.

"Well…" He trailed off, glancing between them both, and then said, in his sweetest voice, "Good night."

Laura finally looked at him. "Good night, Bishop," she said, as if she hadn't heard a single word he'd said before that.

His lips twitched, and then he sauntered out. Laura stared at the spot where he had been as he went, feeling him pass just a little too close to her chair, and then returned her gaze to her soup. There was only a little left, and it was probably cold. She picked up her spoon and began the mostly futile attempt to scoop all the remaining liquid onto it.

Shandra's coherency returned to her in a slow, jumbled mix of words. "How—he—as if—I can't _believe_—as _if_—"

Laura paused and looked up, watching her gesture and attempt to speak, fury still in her eyes, and finally said, "You know you're only encouraging him."

Shandra froze, her hand in mid-gesture, her head cocked to the side, and said, "_What_?"

"You're encouraging him," Laura repeated.

"I—_encouraging_ him? You think I _want_—"

"No," she said. "But every time you react the way he wants you to react, he's encouraged to try you again. As long as you keep raising your defenses, he is going to keep prodding you. He's testing your limits because he's fairly sure he can beat you, should it come to physical violence."

Shandra stared at her. "Are you telling me he's actually thought that much about this?"

Laura shrugged. "He also finds it amusing."

"What, have you asked him?"

"No," she said. "If you've noticed, he tends to laugh at you. I would consider that a sign of amusement."

"So what do I do?"

"Ignore him."

She snorted. "Easy for you to say. He never dares to say anything to _you_."

Laura shrugged again. Not when you're around, she thought, but the fact that Bishop reserved his lewd comments for the benefit of her ears alone caused her some concern as to his motives. It was obvious he was baiting Shandra, mostly for his own amusement, and because it caused the others great consternation. It was obvious he wanted to antagonize them, and what better way to do it than by going after their leader? He didn't even need a reaction from her—the others' attempts to defend her would be more than enough to satisfy his skewed sense of humor. But instead he went for Shandra, and let Laura wonder about the comments he whispered in her own ears as he slipped past her.

Shandra sighed. "Maybe you're right. Maybe I shouldn't let him bait me. But the things he _says_—I mean, you have no clue what he's saying. Really. It's obnoxious. He should be—why don't you ever _do _anything about it?"

"Because it would encourage him," she said.

Shandra stared at her. "You know, I don't get you," she said. "I've been traveling with you for, what, three weeks now?"

"Three and a half, yes."

"Right. And you can look me straight in face and tell me all I have to do to make Bishop leave me alone is ignore him."

"He won't leave you alone," she said, "but he will scale back his attacks. If there's no gain for him, he's not going to expend the energy."

"He tell you that too?"

"Yes."

"Oh." Shandra considered her, and Laura met her gaze unflinchingly. "Why do you put up with him?"

"I don't."

"What do you call it, then?"

"He made the decision to stay. It is not my place to instruct him to stay or go; it's his choice."

"So you just let anyone stay who wants to?"

"I don't let anyone stay."

Shandra made a noise of disbelief. "You sure have a large hodgepodge of followers for not letting any of them stay."

Laura shrugged. "I don't let them stay. It's not up to me if they stay or not. If they're here, and they stay, then it is their prerogative to do so. If they leave, that's their choice as well. As long as they're with me, I will lead them, if that's what they want."

It was a remarkably simple sentiment; she didn't quite understand why everyone seemed to have such a difficult time with it. She didn't control these people's lives; she couldn't control the way they acted towards each other, so why should she assume she could control where they went, or to whom they gave their allegiance? If they wanted to follow her, it was their choice, and she would lead as long as they wanted her to lead them. Or at least trick them into thinking she was leading them, when all she did was go on her way with a strangely large contingent of people stringing along behind her. Did this make her a leader? She didn't know.

"You know," Shandra said, "I _really_ don't get you."

Laura waited, sipping the last dregs of her soup.

"You don't call yourself a leader, but you're in charge of all of us," she said, ticking her points off on her fingers, "you're from a big city, yet seem utterly surprised to be a noble," and again, Laura wondered where she had gotten this idea fixed in her head, and again Laura let it pass by without remark, "you're a cleric, but you never try to evangelize—"

"I'm not much of an evangelizer."

"No, definitely not," Shandra said. "You're much too intimidating to convince people to follow your god."

"Intimidating?" she asked, setting down her spoon, tilting her head.

"Have you never stopped and looked at yourself when you're all done up in your armor?" Shandra shook her head, drinking her ale. "With that flaming mace? You look like some avatar of justice—"

"Hardly."

"—sorry. Why're you so touchy about that?"

"I do not serve Tyr. If I did, then I would be a champion of justice."

"Who do you follow?"

"Hoar," she said, for she never denied an honest answer to a direct question. She summoned a spark of light to her fingertips and traced three lightning bolts in the air; they shimmered for a moment, and then she waved her hand through them, dissipating them. "Hoar the Doombringer."

"I've never heard of him."

"He's not exactly popular," she said, smiling slightly at the thought of her god—lanky and attractive, but cold and dark all at once, insatiable in his thirst for a justice lost to the whims of the system. "He only appears to those who need him, or sends his clerics to those who need their help."

"Do _I _need your help?"

"Your entire farmstead was destroyed because you happened to be in the way. You didn't do anything to deserve or provoke such a fate, and yet it happened anyway. And is _anyone_ doing anything to help you?"

"Well—"

"Doesn't it anger you?"

"Well, yeah. I mean, I was mad as a spitting cat, remember? But there's nothing I can _do _about it anymore—you've got the githyanki, and the lizardmen…well…"

"I handled them," she said.

Shandra stared at her. "You did what?"

"I handled them."

There was a pause, and then she said, "What does that mean?"

"They're gone. I drove a few of them away, and killed whoever remained."

Shandra digested this. "I won't pretend I…but…was that really necessary?"

Laura stared at her levelly. She herself didn't care one way or another about the lizardmen, but they had wronged Shandra and thus had deserved what vengeance she had been able to work upon them. Shandra seemed to read this in her eyes and the frown lines on her face deepened. "Was it really necessary?"

"What do you think?"

"I think…that's a _massacre_ you're talking about. Who says you get to do that to them?"

"Why do they have the right to attack you and expect no retribution? _Someone _needs to remind them that there are consequences for their actions, and the law isn't going to do it." Shandra continued frowning, and she said, "The law can't reach everywhere, Shandra."

"That doesn't mean we should run wild—"

"I have a creed the same as any Tyrran," she said.

"But who's to say if it's right or not?"

"Who's to say if any of the gods are right? If you start down that path, you end up worshipping no one, or Ao, simply because he created you."

"I—" she stopped, and shook her head. "I just don't like it."

She shrugged.

Shandra waited, but she didn't have anything else to say on the subject. She'd made her case; it wasn't her job to convert others. Hoar had other clerics to do that. Her job was to follow his bidding and avenge those who could not avenge themselves, and this was something she could not _stop_ doing.

"Well," she said finally. "Good night, then."

"Good night, Shandra."

The other woman waited, and finally stood and left her. Laura stared into the fireplace, one hand toying uselessly with her spoon, her mind miles and miles away. She was on the right path—she _knew_ she was on the right path, and that this trial was a mere distraction from the bigger task ahead—but a small part of her wished it hadn't taken her so far from home. She stared into the fire, and prayed for guidance, and in return she felt the gentlest nudging to go to bed. She smiled ruefully, and pushed her chair away from the table, and did as she was told.


	6. Chapter 6

**Title:** Not Yet by Lightning

**Chapter:** Six

**Author:** Jade Sabre

**Notes:** Thanks for all the reviews I've gotten so far! I wish I had time to respond to all of them, but I really do appreciate them.

**Disclaimer:** I don't own Neverwinter Nights, or any of its sequels or expansions, or any of the characters contained herein, aside from my PC, who was created on a Bioware engine and thus probably therefore partially belongs to them too.

* * *

**6**

Laura surveyed the paths before her. One led to the main road, to the Weeping Willow Inn and beyond. If she turned around, she could go back to her house and crawl back into bed, a particularly appealing option in the dim grey light. The sky was overcast, making it impossible to tell if the sun had risen yet or not. The other option was presumably the one that had roused her in the first place—the small, nigh-unnoticeable path to her holy glade. There was no other reason for her to be standing in the middle of the swamp in the wee hours of the morning. She paused, looking around, wondering why the Mere was so quiet. Shivering, she hugged herself and started down the path to the glade.

At first she couldn't put a finger on what was happening—everything suddenly seemed different, as if she had gone to take a step and landed on air instead of the ground, as if it wasn't quite as solid as it had seemed. She wanted to take the step but something was shaking her off-balance, something was—some_one_ was shaking her.

Her eyes snapped open, and Sand peered anxiously down into her face. "Ah, good," he said, sounding satisfied, "you're awake."

Still muddled from the dream—still working through the fact that it _was _a dream—she sat up and said, "What—?"

"We have a trip to make," he said, sounding particularly pleased. "I've finally figured out what we need from that girl in Port Llast, and I want to speak to her again."

"Again? Sand," she yawned, "the trial's in a week. We don't have _time_—"

"Nasher promised me as much time as I needed to get the evidence to clear your name. Let him deal with deadlines; we have a trip to make. Up! Dress!"

She sighed and stretched. "Why—"

"As your lawyer, I order you to be quiet and do as I say."

She shook her head and groped around for her ring of light, which she donned, blinking in the sudden brightness. "As you wish."

**o-o-o**

**o-o-o**

They traveled light, and as there were only three of them—Laura, her lawyer extraordinaire, and Shandra "Don't even _think _about leaving me behind" Jerro—they made good time traveling up the coast to the tiny harbor. They bypassed Ember, for which she was grateful—there was something eerie about the place now that it had been cleared of bodies, the dead properly buried and the houses empty and open. She didn't like dwelling on it, and all she could do for them now was expose their murderers, whoever they were.

She dutifully followed Sand into town and pointedly looked in the other direction as he befuddled the guards long enough to gain them entry into Alaine's room. The girl was understandably distraught to see them a second time, and Laura sat as far away from her as she thought possible in the cramped quarters. Shandra succeeded in calming her down, somewhat, and Sand was remarkably restrained, almost downright tactful as he asked his questions. Laura's lips twitched at the carefully compassionate tone of his voice, and while she looked at the wall she paid close attention to everything that they said.

"Well, then," Sand finally said, "I do believe that's everything we need. Thank you, dear girl, for your cooperation. We promise that justice—" Laura raised an eyebrow but said nothing "—will be served, and I must personally thank you for your role in facilitating it."

Alaine looked at him, her eyes red-rimmed and confused, but said, "You're welcome."

Laura nodded to her, once, while Shandra hugged her and promised that everything would turn out all right, or as right as it could be. Sand tapped his foot with impatience, looking at the door, and finally the two farmgirls released each other, and the trio left just as the guard was returning.

"There was no need for that," Shandra said as soon as they were out of earshot.

"For what?" Sand asked.

"Tapping your foot. We take as long as we need—she's not just a piece of evidence like your poison vials or something. She's a person, too."

"Yes, a remarkably stupid one—"

Laura dropped back and let them argue as they made their way back to the inn. She had heard enough to know that Sand wanted to confuse Alaine into admitting that what she had seen wasn't all that clear, rather than to get her to out-and-out say that she hadn't seen Laura herself. Because that wouldn't be true. Or something. She didn't want Sand to cause anyone to lie—and she didn't think he would, as it would be bad to be caught in a lie—but at the same point she didn't follow his strategy for proving her innocence. The affair was entirely straightforward, but he promised her that the Luskans were trying their best to complicate it as much as possible.

She hated them. There were a lot of reasons to hate them, but at the moment, that was the most striking.

She pushed open the door to the inn and pushed away her displeasure, choosing instead to focus on ordering dinner for her companions, as they were too deeply involved in discussing the merits of human farmers versus elven wizards (a discussion that seemed to involve the repetition of words such as "completely ignorant" and "disgustingly arrogant") to fend for themselves. Guiding them to a table, she signaled the innkeeper for food, and then moved to the fireplace, away from the incessant sound of their voices. She hadn't slept enough recently to tread the careful line required to keep any of her companions happy, and didn't trust herself to deal with them fairly.

There was only one other person by the fireplace, a young half-elf woman. Laura recognized her from their last stay in the inn, though she couldn't recall her name, and nodded politely to her, receiving a shrug in return. She sat in one of the fluffy armchairs and leaned forward, resting her elbows on her knees and her chin in her hands, staring into the fire and trying to rest her mind. She released herself from obligations to time and space and simply stared, following the blankness of her thoughts in a hazy circle of nothingness.

"Hey," said a voice, a bit scratchy, flat. Laura looked up to see the half-elf standing next to her chair, looking down her nose at her.

"Hello," she said, her voice just as flat.

The young woman hesitated, sending a sour shade to her expression, and then said, "I've seen you in here before."

Laura sighed inwardly, guessing at what would come next. The question, the accusatory stare, the isolation. It had become a familiar game over the past few weeks, and she hated the Luskans for it as well. She didn't like being the center of attention, and doubly so when that attention was gruesome fascination.

"You're the one who's traveling with Bishop."

Laura started and failed to hide it, glancing up in surprise. She smiled, a bit twisted, and said, "You thought I was going to talk about Ember."

"Yes."

She waved it off, a pragmatic gesture. "If you're traveling with Bishop and the Luskans are blaming you…well, let's just say there's bad blood between them. Besides, you don't strike me as the murderous rampage type."

"Thank you."

"Don't thank me yet. That's not what I wanted to talk to you about."

Laura studied her, a slender wisp, but tall, her expression tight, arms crossed, leaning against the back of the chair, and said, "Bishop?"

"Yeah. Bishop." She looked around and finally perched on the arm of the chair; Laura shifted in order to give her more room. "How long've you been traveling with him?"  
"A little more than a month," she said. "How long did you travel with him?"

"Ages," the young woman said, her gaze going out of focus, and then she shook her head and said, "I mean, it was ages ago. It wasn't—it's hard to keep track of time out in the wilderness. Especially if you're ignoring deadlines in favor of…other things."

Laura waited for her to come back from the land of introspection, a place she was quite familiar with, but after a moment she prodded, "What's your name?"

"Malin," she answered, without thinking, shaking her head again. "Sorry. I just—it was—do you have _any _clue why he's traveling with you?"

She considered this, and shook her head a little, not wanting to let this stranger know how much this worried her. "I asked for his help in retrieving a friend from across the Luskan border on the understanding that he had experience with that area, and after that he's…stayed." She shrugged. "Though if he hates Luskans as much as you say he does, maybe—"

"Oh, he hates them." Malin shuddered. "The things I've seen him do to them…I…it's _bad_. I couldn't watch—I couldn't stay and let him do it."

"So you left?"

"Yeah."

"And he let you leave?"

"Doesn't mean anything," she said. "And it wasn't like we just—look, if you're going to ditch him, do it to his face. And if you're not, well, all the luck in Faerûn won't help you, but take it anyway. Just—just don't turn your back on him, all right?"

Laura filtered through a myriad of responses—"thank you for the advice," or perhaps "I wasn't planning on it," or "he's done a good job of protecting it in the past"—but rejected them all as failing to give a precise definition of her plans on the subject. Unable to define them in her own head, she shifted tactics. "Why are you telling me this?"

"Because he's good at what he does," she said. "And I got burned on it, and I hate the idea that he's still getting away with it."

"It being…?"

"Taking people and using them until he's done with them. He finds people and waits until he's figured out how to win, and then you're stuck and he's gone—"

"I thought you said you left."

"I did. But that didn't mean he was done with me." She shook her head, scowling. "And now look at me. Just the merest mention of him makes me sound like a bitter old—I don't even know. But I saw him with you and saw you and thought…I couldn't _not _talk to you, all right?"

"All right," she said. After another moment of watching the other girl sniffing and staring into the fire, she added, "Thank you."

"I hate him."

"I can tell."

"Don't let him get you. He only serves himself."

"I've noticed."

"Yeah." She sighed and dropped her feet to the floor. Standing, she said, "Look, I know it's none of my business—"

"No," she said, "but thank you anyway."

"Yeah. Well. Tymora be with you."

Laura watched her walk away, trying to organize her thoughts in her head. She found herself focusing on facts that had no bearing on the situation—such as Malin's accusations of…of, well, something. Something bad. And if Bishop had been doing bad things to Luskans, who may or may not have deserved it (she wanted to say they did, but it was rarely as simple as that), then she was obliged to investigate. The thought of asking Bishop about his past was as appealing as the thought of asking Qara and Sand to have a debate about the finer points of magical theory. At least Bishop couldn't make anything explode.

"There you are," Shandra said, and Laura looked over her shoulder to see the other woman approaching from behind her. "Are you going to come eat or not?"

"Coming," she said, and as soon as she sat down Sand attacked her with enough legal jargon to distract her from everything but the fact that in less than a week she was going on trial for her life.

**o-o-o**

**o-o-o**

She told herself she was asking because she needed a break and because Sand didn't need her help in putting together the last bits of evidence for submission. The fact that she had chosen to take this break near midnight on the last night before she surrendered all of her freedom to the Neverwinter legal system was simply incidental, as was the fact that everyone else had gone to bed early to prepare for the day ahead. The Flagon had closed early in order to allow Sand to spread his work across all the tables in the bar, so naturally the others, lacking anything to do, migrated towards their own rooms, making it the perfect time to have a private conversation.

She knocked on his door and then leaned with her back against the wall, crossing her arms and waiting. The door creaked open, and then he stuck his head out, looking for the intruder. She glanced at him, returned her gaze to the opposite wall, and said, "Put a shirt on. I need to talk to you."

"It's kind of late, don't you think?" he said, though he went back into his room. She heard him rustling around and forced her mind onto a calm, neutral train of thought. "I mean," he said, coming back out with the shirt half-pulled over his head, "if you wanted to _talk_, all you have to do—"

"I didn't think you wanted to have this conversation with the others around," she said.

He finished tugging on his shirt and glanced up at her, eyebrows raised. "If _that's _all you wanted, we don't have to—"

"It's about Luskan," she said, continuing as if he hadn't spoken. He froze, and glancing at him again she could tell that he was coiled to strike. She pushed off the wall, still pretending not to notice him, and said, "Where shall we go?"

"Is the elf still in the bar?"

"Yes," she said, somewhat surprised at his apparent willingness to talk.

"Then where were you planning to have this conversation?"

"It's up to you." She gave him a look (your room isn't an option) to forestall any comments, and waited.

He looked back at her, his expression innocent, and finally said, "The front porch. Should be empty, and if it's not, then anyone loitering out there right now deserves to have their skull bashed in."

"I didn't say that," she said, automatically leading the way out there.

"Hm," he said, falling into her footsteps as he always did, and that was all they said until they went outside. It was summertime in Neverwinter, warm and humid, with a cool breeze coming off the sea to mitigate the worst of the sticky air. Lamps shone on the street, and a lone City Watch patrolman wandered by on his rounds; Laura smiled a humorless smile to see that the district was still under control as she turned away from him, leaning against the railing to look out at the street.

"Proud of yourself?" he asked, crossing his arms, watching her. "Bringing peace and prosperity to a criminal district?"

"Perhaps," she said. "It is…good to see that something, at least, is still working the way it is supposed to."

"Unlike the trial?"

"Yes." She didn't want to say anything further on the subject; she was tired of the trial, and she had a different reason for coming out here.

After a moment, he said, "So what, exactly, was so important about Luskan that you felt the need to drag me out of bed in the middle of the night? You already know I've spent time up near there. Was there something else you wanted to know?"

"You hate them," she said.

"Well, yeah."

"Why?"

He shrugged, though she still wasn't looking. "It's not really so much hate as it is…there's not much there to think about. They're despicable, worthless excuses of existence—waste of space, if you ask me. They're not worth wasting the energy hating them."

"But you do hate them." Before he could answer, she turned and tilted her head to the side, causing a few loose strands of hair—a rare sight with her careful coif—to drift across her forehead. "Enough to torture them?"

He couldn't quite make out her expression, and the tone of her voice was, as usual, absolutely no help in figuring out what she was feeling. "Now who told you that?"

"Malin."

"You met Malin, did you?" He snorted a laugh. "She still in Port Llast?"

"You saw her when we were up there?" Her tone wasn't so much curious as it was awaiting confirmation of previous suspicions.

"Of course I did. Went and got herself gored by a dire boar or something. Unsurprising. She's useless." He shifted his weight and said, "So what'd she say again?"

"Luskans. Torture thereof."

"What about it?"

She stared at him in that way that made him wonder if she was actually looking _at_ him or _through_ him, as though she was looking in his direction because she was thinking about him, but also as if her focus was completely inward and she wasn't really seeing him at all. He gave her his best lewd stare, but she was adept at ignoring that, and now was no different. He hated being ignored, and he was beginning to wonder if he didn't hate _her_. Not that it really mattered.

"Torture is…" She blinked, coming back into focus, and said, "It is not honorable. It is not fair play—"

"Maybe not," he said, "but it's not like the Luskans have ever been about fair play themselves."

"Did you kill them?"

He stared at her. "What do you think?"  
"You didn't let any of them go?"

"Hells, I don't remember," he said. He'd long ago discovered what a valuable skill lying with a straight face could be, and he employed it now. "Why does it matter?"

"It matters because," and she cocked her head and took on a peculiar expression, confusion mixed with apology, "I just might have to kill you."

"Huh," he said, not doubting for a second that she could, even if she currently looked more like a confused girl than a capable warrior. "Why?"

"You _tortured_ people," she said. "That's not something I can overlook."

"Well, hell, how would you get revenge on me? Killing me? Ripping out my fingernails first? Revenge _is _torture—"

"That would at least be torture for a reason—"

"Oh, don't go around thinking I was unprovoked," he said, his fists clenching before he remembered himself and plastered a smirk on his face. As he came back to himself, he realized that he'd succeeded in his goal of hearing the cleric speak in something other than her normal unhurried, unworried voice. It rose in pitch, and her expression had changed as well; and she, too, was clenching her fists.

"Were you provoked?"

"I don't think that's any of your business," he said.

"It is if you don't want me to kill you."

"Don't _you_ want to kill me?"

She opened her mouth and abruptly shut it; amused, Bishop watched as she warily pulled into herself, regaining her composure and saying neutrally, "There's no reason to—"

"You're avoiding my question," he said, grinning, uncrossing his arms and taking a step towards her.

"Why do you hate Luskans?"

Her lips twitched as he paused. He took a long, deep whiff of the air, and said, "Well, if you don't want to kill me, then I clearly haven't been doing my job."

"Which is…?"

He shrugged, but she answered for him. "To alienate yourself from the entire group and then insist on following along to watch their reactions. Because you think it's amusing to watch a cadre of professionals reduced to bickering children because of one lewd remark?"

"Close enough." He grinned at her again. "Why Farthing, I didn't know you were listening."

"I wasn't," she said. "But you're not the only one who's watching."

He met her gaze, then, and immediately cursed himself for doing it—there was something alluring in the darkness of her eyes, something she probably didn't even realize was there. Duncan's niece was capable of immense charm, but seemed content to be aloof instead, to the point of being downright hostile if you didn't realize she wasn't being serious. Come to think of it, he'd never seen her so much as bat her eyes at a member of the opposite sex—but then again, Duncan, being her uncle, would probably beat off any would-be suitors. Because Duncan was her uncle. And he, Bishop, hated Duncan.

Funny, but her eyes were still doing a number on his better judgment.

He had to do something to make her stop, or at least realize what she was doing—so he gave into his overwhelming instinct and closed the distance between them. She stood her ground, looking up ever-so-slightly—she was a tall girl, unlike her pathetic half-elf excuse of an uncle—and so he didn't bother stopping until the space between them was less than a handbreadth wide. "And what have you been watching?" he asked, looking down ever-so-slightly, observing that her eyes only looked better upon closer inspection. He ran his tongue along the inside of his bottom lip, watching for her reaction. This close, he could see the tension in her face as she pressed her lips together, maintaining an expressionless mask as she held her ground against him.

"I'll have to mark you," she said, her voice very quiet, but steady.

"Oh?" He shifted, leaning closer, reaching around her with one arm to rest his hand against the rail behind her. "That sounds—"

"If you want to stay, I have to mark you." The tension bled out of her face, and she looked at him with a sort of curious detachment.

His eyebrows drew together. "What the hell are you talking about?"

"I'm not sure," she said. "Do you want to stay?"

"I'm not sure," he said. "What's this mark?"

"Hoar," she said. "I have to mark you as protected. Otherwise I'll have to—something. I don't know yet."

"Is this because of the torture thing? Because that's bullshit," he said. "Like I said, they had it coming to them—"

"I don't know that."

"Well, I'm telling you," he said, forgetting himself again, leaning in closer until his chest hit hers and reminded him of where he was. She finally moved, out and around him, and he twisted to face her; she gave him an inscrutable look, but he told himself that he saw a trace of—surprise, or something like it, in her eyes.

"Even if you were justified in your torture," she said, "the chances that—" She paused, picking her words carefully. "You're not telling me why you hate the Luskans—you don't hate them, I know," she said, cutting him off before he had the chance to speak, "but whatever else you're not telling me…"

And she was giving him that look again, the at-him-through-him look, like she _knew_, but she didn't know what she knew. And she was Duncan's niece, and there was no telling what Duncan had told her. But she wasn't Duncan's niece, because no relative of Duncan's would offer him a way out of explaining every last damn detail.

"Fine," he said. "Mark me, whatever the hell that means."

"It just means that you're under my protection. I can't harm you, and anyone searching for you with vengeance in their heart won't be able to touch you without my permission."

"I thought," he said, watching her as she tugged something out from under her shirt, "you didn't know what this was?"

"It's coming to me," was her answer. She held up what she'd been looking for—it looked to be an old and worn coin, though it wasn't of any currency he'd ever seen.

"So I'll be under your protection," he said. "Are you saving my life?" And he couldn't keep the snarl out of his voice; didn't really _want _to keep the snarl out of his voice.

"You could look at it that way," she said, her gaze on the coin as she turned it over in her hands. "Or you could consider it a precautionary action." She glanced up at him and said, "It's simply to keep me from having to incapacitate you. You don't owe me anything."

He swallowed, hard, and glared at her. She stared back impassively and said, "Do you want me—"

He couldn't quite hear what else she said, because her words sent a shiver through him that enflamed him more than anything had in…a long time. And she was Duncan's niece and yet Duncan's opposite in so many ways, and it was easy to pretend she wasn't, and he found himself wondering whether her hair would be rough or soft to the touch, and if it was possible for her to make any sound other than a sharp pronouncement or a—oh, _gods_, he'd been joking before, but now he quite seriously wanted to slam her into the wall and find out if there was an actual woman beneath her aloof gaze.

"Well?" she asked, the flatness of her voice cutting across his fantasies most cruelly.

He shrugged, looking away from her lips. "Sure."

She came closer but still maintained a decent distance between them, reaching out to press the coin against the side of his neck. It was strangely cool, despite having been in her palm (though to be fair, her fingertips brushing his neck were cold, but he was trying not to focus on that—he had no doubt that any attempt to slam her against anything would result in his castration, at the very least). "Where do you want it?" she asked. "I don't know if it'll leave an actual mark or not."

Oh, hells. Might as well enjoy this. "Out of sight," he said. "On my back."

So she went behind him and lifted up his shirt and pressed the coin against his skin and he clenched his teeth against his every instinct as she started muttering archaic words he couldn't understand. The cold burned itself into his back as she put her other hand on his back to steady him and his temperature skyrocketed and he sucked in a breath of the warm air and felt himself shaking, ever-so-slightly.

"Well," she said, and she withdrew her hands from his back. "That's interesting."

"Did it leave a mark?" he asked.

"Yes," she said. "Very faint, though. I doubt anyone would notice it. Good night."

He didn't want to turn around and let her see the exact effect she'd had on him, and so he gripped the railing and waited until he heard the door swing shut before relaxing. He stared at the street, trying to figure out the best way to get what he wanted. Because he wanted her. It was no longer a question of if or maybe or if only; he wanted her, and thus he was going to get her. Somehow. But if her eyes were any indication, then it would be quite worth his while to crack her.

Plus, the look on the paladin's face…

Grinning, he set off for his room and some quality time with himself and his plans.


	7. Chapter 7

**Title:** Not Yet by Lightning

**Chapter:** Seven

**Author:** Jade Sabre

**Notes: **I'm not entirely satisfied with this chapter, and never really have been; I couldn't figure out which POV to tell it from, and I have trouble with one of the POVs to begin with, and so it still feels a bit muddled to me. So for that, I apologize.

As always, thanks for the reviews!

**Disclaimer:** I don't own Neverwinter Nights, or any of its sequels or expansions, or any of the characters contained herein, aside from my PC, who was created on a Bioware engine and thus probably therefore partially belongs to them too.

* * *

**7**

Laura sat on a bench in a darkened side chapel and stared at a statue of Tyr. The statue seemed to stare back, right over her head, unwilling to acknowledge her presence. She didn't care much for the artistic style, anyway; something about his features seemed blurry, indistinct, as if the sculptor was afraid to define his lord too clearly. For what? Fear of invoking his presence? Wasn't that the point of the statue in the first place?

Furthermore, the god's one hand was drawn into a fist against his chest, while his handless arm was extended. No offer of mercy, here. If you could reach out and hold on, maybe he'd help you. If not, then you clearly didn't deserve to be there. At least, that was what this whole Trial by Combat thing seemed to be about. If you were meant to win—if you were justified—then Tyr would help you. And if not…

Laura was justified. She, in fact, considered herself to be beyond justification. She was utterly guiltless. And yet she still had to fight, though there was nothing about _her _worth fighting for. Oh, she was annoyed that she had had to join the Neverwinter nobility and traipse all over the northern Sword Coast, but the only harm was to her reputation, which didn't bother her at all. She only worried what it would do to people's perception of her god.

Now _there _was something to fight for. For Hoar, against those who distrusted his strength. For Ember, massacred for the sake of trapping the _kalach-cha_. For the innocent dead whose home had been chosen as a battleground simply because it was _there_.

She held her hands in front of her, recognizing their telltale shaking and willing herself to be calm. She had to save her strength for the battle ahead. It would come; it always came; and she had no doubt in her mind. Pain and anger. These were her greatest weapons.

Somehow, she doubted these were the sorts of meditations the Tyrrans had in mind.

"My lady?"

As if he had known her thoughts, Casavir stepped into the chapel. His normally placid face was tight, though otherwise unexpressive.

"Casavir," she said.

Some of the tightness eased. "I do not wish to disturb you from your meditations—"

"I am sure Tyr does not mind," she said, matching his formality with a hint of a smile in an effort to help him feel at ease.

"And you?"

She shrugged. "I do not know where to focus my thoughts."

"Ah." He stepped closer, drawing into the flickering candlelight. He looked around the room and said, "I have been here many times before."

"Is the Trial so often invoked in Neverwinter?" she asked, intrigued. "It seemed from Sand's description to be nigh obsolete."

"It mostly is, in the legal system," he said. "But there are other trials, and not all of them physical. This is a place to meditate on all things, to ask for strength and clear judgment."

She glanced back at the statue, trying to imagine generosity in those distantly gazing eyes. After another moment he said, "You are not comfortable here."

"No," she said. "While Lorne is probably slumbering, untroubled—"

"Tyr will send him nightmares."

"Perhaps, but this is not about justice," she said, resting her elbows on her knees and her head in her hands. Thinking of Lorne as her enemy made her head ache as much from the absurdity of it as from the pain in her heart. "If this was about justice someone should have smote him long ago—"

"Justice comes through the law—"

"Then the law should condemn him!" She raised her head to look at him and said wearily, "But the law has _failed_, Casavir. And where the law fails, my creed begins."

"A creed of revenge." He did little to disguise the darkness in his voice. "With no room for proper punishment, or justice, or mercy—"

"Mercy. Justice." She snorted. "You yourself are walking proof that the two are contradictory."

"How so, my lady?" He added the epithet to attempt some semblance of lightness—he hadn't come here to argue theology, he had come to offer his assistance. She was obviously pained over her upcoming trial, and something in him wanted to reach out and soothe her, reassure her. He didn't know what to do, aside from offer his beliefs, but she had her own to sustain her. He didn't know what he _could_ do—he'd come to offer action because he was no good with speaking (how does one put their soul into words?), but somehow he had ended up talking anyway.

She brushed through his cobwebbed attempt at formality with one word. "_You_," she said, and he nearly took a step back at the force in her quiet voice, "constantly lamenting that you have lost your sense of justice when all you did was _act_ on it, and seeking death over a forgiveness you do not believe you will receive."

"I—"

"You don't. You don't _believe_."

He bit off an angry retort, his shoulders sagging, his face haggard and…_old_. The words of Yaisog echoed in her mind: _It is said no blade can harm him, and he embraces battle like one who wishes to die_. "No. Perhaps I do not. And perhaps I have good reason not to. The strength of my belief…" He trailed off, and she thought he looked a far cry from the warrior she had first met, the one enflamed with a purpose and—she knew now—a death wish even the orcs could see. And he had given up both to follow her, and this was the result. "Sometimes, I wonder if…"

"You'll fall?" His haggard lines set into stone in his face, and she shrugged. "If you continue acting like you think you are going to fall, then you _will_ fall, Casavir. You know that even better than I. But I wonder if…" She studied him, his eyes downcast, keeping to the shadowed edges of the candlelight, a man lurking, lost and uncertain, at the edge of despair.

She repeated, "If you keep acting like you are going to fall, then you will fall. But—not from any specific action on your part. You will fall from your inaction, your indecisiveness. Your faith is strong," she said, willing him to look up, "and you know that. Believe, and _act_ on your belief, and everything else will follow. The strength will be there; it is always there. All you must do is act."

He looked up at last, looking up a woman at once too young to have had a crisis of faith and too wise not to know what it was like to doubt. His throat tight, he could only nod, and in return she gifted him with a small smile, not encouraging, but…present. And in that moment he realized the ice around his heart had melted, and the puddle that remained evaporated as if a ray of sunlight had broken through the clouds of his despair, dispelling his doubt.

To offset the sudden painful revelation that her smile made him breathless, he said, "I know you do not need a champion, particularly one of justice. But…" because it was easier to express gratitude through the act of offering.

"Thank you," she said, because she knew she should be grateful, "but I have to do this. For Ember."

He nodded. "You know the rules of combat?"

"Yes," she said, "but any advice you have to offer would be welcome."

"Do _not_ yield," was the first thing out of his mouth. "Use whatever resources are available to him. Do not yield, for he will not hesitate to kill you."

"I am not planning on yielding," she said. "I plan to strike his skull with my mace and beat him until his head is nothing more than a bloody, broken shell on the ground."

He swallowed at this, and said quietly, "If you think that will help."

"It is all I can offer them."

There was another pause, longer, in which he tried to disguise the fact that he was staring at her and she wondered what he thought of what he saw. Finally, he reached into a pack on his belt and pulled out a flask. "Please, take this."

She reached out a hand, and he reluctantly stepped forward to give it to her. She could almost _see _him tense as her bare fingers brushed against his gloved ones, taking the flask and turning it over, inspecting the strange golden sheen on its outer shell. "The water inside has been blessed—it contains healing properties. It was given to me, long ago, but you have more need of it now than I ever will."

"Thank you," she said again, more slowly, not daring to raise her eyes to his face.

Silence reigned while she persisted in not looking at him and he didn't move a muscle. Finally he said, in a constricted voice, "Good luck, my lady."

She looked up then, met his gaze, saw the strength of his fear and worry, and smiled gently. "Thank you, Casavir."

He bowed, and when he straightened there was a steely, fortified tinge to the lines of his face. She nodded once, and he left her, still absentmindedly holding the flask. She turned her gaze back to the statue, her mind wandering for a moment, before she closed her eyes and drew inward, focusing her mind on her prayer for strength.


	8. Chapter 8

**Title:** Not Yet by Lightning

**Chapter:** Eight

**Author:** Jade Sabre

**Notes:** I owe thanks fo AceOfDaimonds and her fic "The Sweetest Downfall" for inspiring one of the scenes in this chapter.

Also, I'm still experimenting with the breaks between sections, because honestly I hate everything that isn't just a double-space between paragraphs, but is not-so-friendly towards that. Alas.

This's a longer chapter, the first of what I kind of consider the Hoar trilogy, if I were inclined to name my chapters (and I would be so inclined, if I didn't have a penchant for liking literary references that require a lot of time to look up—ask my poor beta how long it took me to come up with a title for my fic, and you might see why I've avoided naming the chapters). Thanks especially for the comments on the last chapter; they really helped me see what other people thought was going on there, when I couldn't really see it anymore myself.

**Disclaimer:** I don't own Neverwinter Nights, or any of its sequels or expansions, or any of the characters contained herein, aside from my PC, who was created on a Bioware engine and thus probably therefore partially belongs to them too.

* * *

**8 **

She woke in the pre-dawn darkness and lay in bed, thinking, until the darkness turned to grey. She rose and dressed, slipping on her old chain shirt and buckling her mace to her belt and her shield to her back. Not even Sal was awake as she made her way through the common room and out the front door, then up the little hill to her ruined keep.

She left a note for Veedle, instructing him to start rebuilding the library as soon as possible, and found Kana eating breakfast and told her to recruit more men. The commander saluted and returned to her meal; Laura wondered if she had even gone to bed the previous night, or if she had spent all that time poring over the strategic and military reports scattered around her.

By the time she made her way to the stables, the sun was half-over the horizon, gathering its strength for the final leap into daylight. She thought of Brother Merring as she saddled up, commandeering the pretty grey she had received in Neverwinter, and smiled. She went out the ruined front gates and told the nervous Greycloak standing guard that she had to go contact a few more recruits. He didn't have time to ask where she rode, and by midmorning she was well on her way down the High Road.

The area around Crossroad Keep was a wreck, she discovered, as her horse cantered past countless abandoned farms and fallow fields. Nasher had given her a hell of a task—one she found surprising, given her utter lack of experience. While she was confident she would eventually have a system, she dreaded the upcoming days of trial-and-error, and resented the fact that Nasher had, in one stroke, tripled her obligations and quartered her freedom. She was out for revenge, not for the greater glory of Neverwinter, and she was afraid the drudgery of getting her bearings would take too much of her time away from her ultimate goal.

She took a fairly brisk pace, as much for time's sake as anything else, but around noon she became aware that she was being followed. She rode for a few more minutes, considering her options, until she reined in her horse and dismounted, leading it onto the road's shoulder and digging around in her pack for something to eat.

She wore, as she usually did, the Harvest Cloak over her armor, and the combined padding meant she barely felt the tip of the dagger held against her back. She froze, however, when a voice behind her said, "Hands in the air, turn around nice and slow, girlie, and we won't have any troubles."

Kana had mentioned bandits, but she had failed to mention that they were brazen enough to ambush an armed, armored traveler. Granted, she was a woman traveling alone, but she didn't think she looked _that_ incompetent. It was a point of pride to look professional.

She complied, stepping away from the horse. Three bandits immediately took to her packs, while two more poked their swords into her side (tangling them in her cloak, carelessly) to make up for the dagger's disappearance from her back. The apparent leader still held it and sized her up unfavorably. Six against one, assuming they were too cocky to have backup in the brush. There were enough trees to provide cover, and—

She chided herself for thinking too far ahead and not paying attention to the fact that any moment now one of them could behead her without much trouble. "Now," the leader was saying, "what brings a pretty little thing like you down the High Road all alone, hm?"

"Riding," she said. "You don't want to do this."

"Don't I?" he asked. "Because I really, really think I do."

He was looking a bit hungry now, which made her sigh. "It'll be better for you if you don't."

"Why? What're you going to do, use that?" He waved the tip of his dagger towards her mace.

"Exactly," she said, ignoring both his jeers and the more forceful jabs coming from the short swords. "You'll force me to draw it and bash all your skulls in, which will result in blood all over my mail, and I'd rather not be covered in blood when I reach my destination."

"Aw, the wittle wadie's—"

She came up to his nose, for Hoar's sake

"—worried about mussing her outfit. Find anything or not?" he called irritably to the men searching her saddlebags.

One of them had found her potions bag and was waving it around. "Looks like—"

And then he dropped down to the ground, dead, an arrow in his blood-gushing throat. The remaining five bandits turned to gawk in the direction the arrow had flown from, giving Laura time to twist her hands, muttering an incantation. Lightning flashed down from the cloudless sky to strike all of them, lifting their feet from the ground while their bodies shook before mercilessly dropping them, leaving them motionless.

Laura sniffed and regretted it, as the smell of burnt hair made her nauseous, and bent to pick up her potions bag. She straightened to find Bishop leaning against her horse.

"You followed me."

"We did." He cocked his head, a look of scornful dislike on his face as he said, "The others will be here in a moment." She shrugged and went back to settling her saddlebags. "Any particular reason you left alone?"

"I didn't think anyone would want to come."

"Given your ability to attract trouble—"

"This is unrelated to that."

She met his gaze, seeing curiosity and the hint of malice that was always there. Hoof beats sounded on the road, which he must have heard earlier. After a moment of staring, he said, "Doesn't mean you won't get attacked," gesturing at the bodies.

"I can handle bandits."

"Didn't say you couldn't."

"Just implied it."

"Never," but he grinned in as good-natured a way as he ever managed, a rather unreassuring, predatory look. She snorted in return—_I do not like the way he looks at you_—and turned to watch the others coming up the road. He laughed shortly, and she ignored him.

It appeared as though half her companions had ridden after her—there was Shandra (of course), and Casavir, holding the reins of an unsaddled horse, and hells, Neeshka—but unaccompanied by Khelgar, rare since the dwarf's conversion. The tiefling guessed the reason behind the faint surprise on her face, because she laughed and said, "We tossed for who would come. He hates horses worse than I do, and when we saw you'd taken one—"

"You are not hurt, my lady?" Casavir asked, seeing the bodies on the ground, but before she (or Bishop, who _always_ had something to say) could answer, Shandra jumped in.

"What in the Nine Hells were you _thinking_, running off like that? You could've been killed! Or someone could've come after me! Or—"

Laura waited patiently for her rant to die down, at which point she simply said, "I am unharmed. I did not think any of you would wish to come, but as you're here…" She looked at them, the three sitting on their horses with varying levels of concern and amusement on their faces, and not at the person behind her, his mocking gaze boring into the back of her head, and she felt a small part of her burden lift. She sighed, in passing gratitude, and said, "You might as well come."

"Like we'd let you go alone," Shandra snorted as her leader mounted up. "Where're we going?"

Laura didn't answer, simply whipped her horse into a gallop, leaving them to catch up.

**o-o-o**

**o-o-o**

She knew Bishop was suspicious as soon as they started into the Mere on their second day of traveling, but she was still silent. Shandra and Neeshka chattered enough for six people, and Bishop apparently didn't care enough to confirm his suspicious. Poor Casavir was clearly out of place in the swamp—apparently he'd never heard of an anti-rust charm. She'd heard rumors that in places like Neverwinter, it was a point of pride to keep your armor rust-free yourself, but such lofty ideals simply weren't practical in the Mere. Tarmas had enchanted her very first armor and weapons, when she'd been old enough to buy them at the Harvest Fair, and his charms still held, though the armor was back at the Keep. She now prodded Sand into taking care of her newer purchases, though he would never cease complaining about his great arcane talents being put to such a use, his charms were just as good as, if not better than, the old ones.

There were bugs (apparently everyone except Bishop and Laura didn't know anything about anti-bug charms, either), little swamp gnats constantly buzzing in people's ears, and the swamp made strange glugging noises, and of course every now and then if anyone looked too closely at the water on either side of the path they'd see dead people. But she continued, and where she went, they all followed (complaining merrily all the way).

Finally, when they were in a part of the Mere she not only recognized, but knew more than one path through, she stopped and dismounted. The others stared around, then at her, and Shandra gave voice to their thoughts: "We came all this way for a _swamp_?"

Laura shrugged, handing the reins of her horse to Casavir. Pointing the way they'd come, she said, "The inn back there is called the Weeping Willow, and it's good, and," as she pointed the way they were riding, "there's probably something at the end of the road."

Shandra gaped at her. "You're—what're you—"

She shrugged again and said, "Feel free to explore a bit. It's up to you. I'll find you when I've finished."

"Finished _what_?" Shandra demanded, but Laura just smiled—feeling its bitter weight—turned, and plunged into the undergrowth.

"Where's she—" Neeshka started, then stopped, at a complete loss for words. Sure, she'd spent time in the countryside, but this environment was far removed from anything the city-bred tiefling was prepared for.

"Can you follow her?" Casavir asked Bishop, with great misgiving in his voice.

Bishop raised his eyebrows. "Sure, if you think she wants us to. Which I don't think she does. Far be it from _me_ to give the order to disobey—"

"Oh, shut up," Shandra snapped, while Neeshka said, "What now?"

"Well, we can go back to the inn, or we can keep going," Bishop said, in a tone of great irony. "Or we could ignore her ditching us like we did yesterday, and go after her."

"You were just as eager to come," Neeshka said, tail in the air, thrashing. "Let's just go back to the inn and get out of this place. It gives me the creeps."

"It is a place of great darkness," Casavir said, in what was probably supposed to be a comforting tone. Shandra and Bishop both snorted, for once in agreement.

"Maybe we should go back to the inn," Shandra said. "That's probably where she wants to find us."

"I think she'll be able to find us wherever we go, and _I_ want to know what's at the end of this road," Bishop said, and with that nudged his horse into a trot.

"Wait—" Neeshka said, but Shandra immediately turned and followed Bishop.

"He's the only one who can get us out," the farmer-turned-fighter tossed back.

"She's right," Casavir said, and also followed, for Shandra's safety's sake, if nothing else.

Neeshka deliberated a moment more, tail twitching in agitation, before she too nudged her horse. "Wait up!"

**o-o-o**

**o-o-o**

Even though it had been months since she'd been there, her holy glade looked curiously untouched by the normal natural cycles of growth. A cool mist hung in the air, and the deep pool was as still as ever as she knelt beside it. A breeze rustled in the trees, as if acknowledging her presence; the weak sunshine filtering through the canopy was a twinkling green, settling the entire glade in a peaceful, muted glow.

She withdrew from her pack the articles of evidence she had used in her trial for Ember. She sprinkled them in water from the pool, and then reached under the roots of the largest tree and withdrew a crude wooden altar, about the size of her potions bag. She carefully arranged her offerings upon it—there a vial of poison, a Luskan insignia, clothing, arrowheads—and then, finally, took Lorne's assassin ring and set it at the altar's foot.

Bowing her head, she murmured, "For Ember." Her hand crept up and drew out from under her shirt a coin, clutching it as she kept her vigil. It was impossible to tell how much time passed as she knelt in the still glade, until the coin in her hand suddenly burned with cold, startling her out of her meditation.

She opened her eyes and saw her altar glowing, even as a frost grew over the ring, hardening and crackling until the ring itself broke in two. She felt the freedom, the release—and then the brush of fingertips across her forehead. "For Ember," came the light tenor of her god's voice, and then the glade was quiet and dark again.

Letting out a long, deep breath, she carefully placed everything as it was before, dusted off her knees, and pointed her boots in the direction she had to go to finish her task.

**o-o-o**

**o-o-o**

It was almost worth the news she brought to see Retta Starling's face light up when she opened the door and saw her fifth "daughter" standing outside, looking a little haggard but otherwise fine.

"Laura!" she exclaimed, and hugged her; Laura hugged back, feeling the strangest urge to cry. She drew her inside, saying, "Does Daeghun know you're back?"

She tried a smile—it didn't break her face, and so she said, "No—it's not a long visit, so—"

"I understand," Retta said, though her disappointment was palatable. "I'd go get Bevil, but—oh! You don't know!"

"Don't know what?" she asked, feeling a tightening around her chest. She couldn't—not if Bevil—

"He was attacked, not long after you left." Laura felt the sudden weight of time on her shoulders; Retta wouldn't be so calm if it had happened recently. "Something out in the swamp. Came back—thank Lathander," though her voice was grudging as she said it, to Laura's amusement, "Brother Merring found him before he collapsed. Won't say a word about what it was or what happened, but he doesn't come out except for militia training. Works himself to death, needs his rest, but I'll—"

"Tell him I said hello." Laura drew a breath (of what? Strength? Relief?) and said, "Also—Retta—I'm here for—"

She stopped. She had rehearsed her speech over and over in her head—simple, direct honesty, presentation of the deceased's belongings—that was how these things were handled. That was how members of the clergy—no matter whose clergy; all that mattered was the slant one put on it—were supposed to handle these things.

But she hadn't counted on actually caring how Retta took the news. It had been so long since she'd encountered the kind of relationship she now felt—the kind that only develops over years of knowing someone, of watching them and coming to understand them and caring for them—she felt the urge to cry again, selfishly, and it was harder to suppress. She was friends with most of her companions, and she cared about them, but they tended to be as tight-lipped as she was—she wouldn't claim to know what went through their heads any more than they could claim the same about her. It just wasn't the _same_, and she suddenly felt lonely, lonelier than she'd ever felt before.

Retta must have seen this, for she hugged her again and said gently, "Sit down, dear—the children are in the garden, I've got time—what's wrong?"

Laura took a deep breath, schooling herself into something professional, and said, "Retta—I asked about Lorne."

Retta's eyes lit up, but she sobered at the look on Laura's face. "And?" she asked, clearly fearing the worst.

Or rather, that he was dead. Laura almost laughed, knowing that the worst was far worse than anyone could have imagined. And knowing that—and looking, for the first time in months, into the eyes of someone who knew and loved her despite knowing her for years—she suddenly couldn't bring herself to recite her speech. It wasn't Retta's fault her son had defected, that he had caused so much suffering—the revenge she had won in blood would only be weakened by making an old woman cry.

"He's dead," she said, reaching out and grasping the other woman's hand. "He—he died in battle, against a powerful foe. But—he was brave enough to face—them—and—it was a good death."

She drew out Lorne's old leather bag, full of crumbling swamp moss and too-tough jerky—the kind of bag Retta lovingly made for everyone in the militia, the only trace of West Harbor she'd found among his possessions. Retta took it, her eyes filling with tears.

"Thank you, my dear, dear girl—" she started, and Laura couldn't bear it, so she drew her into another hug, and held her while she cried for her son, saying a prayer for the boy Lorne once was.

**o-o-o**

**o-o-o**

She entered the Farlong residence through the back door, hanging her shield and mace in their usual place, leaving her chain shirt on the box that held extra arrows. It amused her to note that he hadn't erased any sign of her presence, and that indeed things were still laid out as though they were waiting for her to come and take them.

She had stoked the fire and put the water to boil and was just selecting her tea leaves when he entered the kitchen and said, in a tone wry in its flatness, "Ah, foster daughter. I see you have returned."

"Briefly," she said, and that was all that was said for the next several minutes, while he unloaded from hunting and she finished making tea. They met by unspoken agreement in the sitting room, him in his small but finely crafted wooden chair before the fireplace, she in the plush little chaise next to the fireplace and the spinning wheel (also not moved from its original position, despite the fact that it could go any number of places, she was sure he wasn't using it)—the only comfortable piece of furniture in the house. It was only there because she'd gone to Tarmas's house with Amie when she was eight and seen what real chairs were supposed to be like. She had tried every trick in the book, to no avail, before she thought of just asking for one politely; and he had given it to her, and that was the first lesson she really remembered figuring out on her own.

Her smile at the memory faded as she looked at her tea and said, quietly, "I've been to see Retta Starling. Lorne is dead."

He accepted this with a nod and said, "How?"

"He was working as a Luskan assassin and fighting champion, and I had to challenge him, and I fought against him." She shut her eyes. "And won."

Daeghun said nothing, which was a relief, as she finished, "I didn't tell Retta that."

"That was wise," he said. "Humans make a bigger spectacle of grief than is necessary, and adding to her pain would only have increased that."

It was a relief to have him support her decision, to tell her she had done the right thing, to hear someone saying something she fully agreed with (what was the point of grief? What's gone is gone. It's a mere matter of discipline, mourning). She _missed_ his calm, sound judgment. Except…the degree of its soundness…

She looked down at her tea again, curled her fingers around her mug, and said, "I fought the githyanki. I know there's a shard in my chest." She looked up and met his gaze, reading twinges of regret, concern, patience, all fluttering through, and said, "Tell me about my mother."

And he did.

He spoke at length about the shards, and the battle, and of better days, traveling with her mother. She was silent, listening, watching, so alert that she saw him wince as his voice cracked on his dead wife's name, and he stopped talking.

She waited, and he whispered, "I—I cannot speak of it anymore. I—please."

And in that one word of pleading she heard a lifetime—_her_ lifetime—of grief threatening to overwhelm its prison (so much for grief being pointless—or perhaps it was, but so powerful a force that it was hard to resist), so she said, "Thank you, Father."

He couldn't look at her, and that hurt almost as much as glimpsing his pain, so she stood and collected his teacup from his limp grasp, and returned it and hers to the kitchen. She came back and stood for a moment, looking into the empty hearth, before saying, "I have to go—there's work to be done…this is a lot bigger than I think you or I thought it would be," she said, with a bit of a smile in her voice. "But—I'm at Crossroad Keep, up the main road, if you ever need me." She hesitated.

He looked up and met her gaze. "The wind at your back, foster daughter," he said, sounding more like himself.

"Thank you," she said again, and left.

**o-o-o**

**o-o-o**

_"Father," said Laura, an eleven-year-old girl preparing to compete in her first Harvest Cup challenge, "what's the purpose of the Harvest Fair?"_

_Daeghun, busy checking to make sure he had everything he wanted to trade, answered, "It's a time of remembrance for the villagers."_

_"Remembering what?" she asked. She knew, sort of, that something had happened when she was a baby, and that it had taken most of her younger childhood to rebuild, but no one ever really talked about what had actually taken place._

_"There was a battle," he said shortly. "And the village was destroyed, and the villagers rebuilt it, and now they insist on holding a fair to celebrate how strong they are."_

_"A battle? Were we attacked?" A sudden thought struck her. "We won, right? I mean, what if they come back?"_

_"No. A battle was fought, and West Harbor happened to be the battleground. It was long ago, and matters little to the events of today."_

_She absorbed this, accepting the load of furs she was going to carry, half of her wanting to go find Bevil and the other half hoping for more information. Daeghun had never spoken this much on the subject before, and she thought she might be able to get more from him. "Who was it between, then?"_

_"Other forces," he answered. "Forces from beyond—forces beyond what the militia would have been able to handle."_

_"Everyone made it out okay, though, right?"_

_"Everyone who is in West Harbor today, yes. Hurry, it's time to go."_

_She trotted to keep up with him (having not hit her growth spurt, and having no way of knowing that in a year she'd be as tall as him, and in a half year after that she'd be taller). Daeghun seemed to think the conversation was over, but another thought had occurred to her; she hesitated, and finally asked, "What about Mo—"_

_"Not everyone lived," he said, his tone suddenly so sharp that she was almost afraid to look at him. But she did, and beyond the tightness of his features she suddenly saw a fear—and a sadness, no, a grief that she had never seen before, and it scared her. "Young Bevil's waiting for you by the bridge. Go."_

_He'd never sent her away from him before, which only served to scare her further, but she obeyed, her arms overflowing with furs that nearly hid her face from her friend's as she started across the bridge._

_"Hey!" Bevil said. "What's—come on, it's the Harvest Cup! We're finally old enough to compete! We have to talk to Georg—"_

_"I don't want to," she said. "You can compete in your own stupid Harvest Cup."_

_"But—"_

_"I said I don't want to!" She suddenly shoved her load into his longer arms and took off down the path._

_Amie found Bevil struggling to hold onto his newfound burden. "The challenges are about to start!" she said, jealousy flowing off her in waves—she was a year too young to compete. "What're you—"_

_"I don't know," he said. "C'mon, let's take these to Galen and see if we can find her."_

_**o-o-o**_

_**o-o-o**_

_Laura didn't stop running until she reached the Starling house, banging on the door as hard as she could, out of breath but determined to find answers. The door opened to reveal four-year-old Lisbet, sucking on her thumb and staring wide-eyed at the disheveled girl in the doorway. "Ma!" she yelled. "Ma-aa!"_

_"I'm coming, who on earth—oh, Laura!" said Retta Starling, covered in flour. Laura remembered with a guilty start that her de facto mother figure—Retta mothered all the children in the village, really—would be baking pies for the feast later that night, and started backing away, not wanting to be a nuisance. "Why aren't you with Bevil, signing up for the challenges?"_

_"I—I was just wondering some things," she muttered, shrugging, looking down at the front stoop. "About—things."_

_Retta was Daeghun's opposite in so many ways, such as how she now dropped everything to deal with the elf's foster daughter. "Lisbet, run back to the nursery. Come on, Laura, you can help me make the crusts."_

_Laura followed her through the maze of rooms—the Starling household had one hallway with four rooms off it, and had gradually expanded, one room at a time, until it was faster to cut from the parlor to the playroom and then through Bevil's room to reach the kitchen than to try to find it the normal way—and emerged in a fairly flour-covered room itself, with a big fire blazing in the hearth and another one in the oven, pie pans clustered on one counter and the largest pile of dough Laura had ever seen on the other. Retta handed her a rolling pin and pushed her towards the dough, while she herself went to inspect the pots hanging over the fire._

_"Now, what is it, dear?" she asked._

_Laura found the footstool and stood on it, trying to figure out the best way to attack a mound almost as tall as she was. "I was just wondering…about the Harvest Festival. I was talking to Father, and—" she finally reached out with both hands and pushed down on it "—he said it was a time for remembering how West Harbor was rebuilt."_

_"Mm-hm."_

_"And—and he said—" this clearly wasn't working; she had two elbow-deep holes in the mound, now, and was starting to tip forward "—he said there was a battle."_

_Retta was silent, which either meant she had something in her mouth and couldn't answer, or that Laura was coming closer to a forbidden subject than she'd ever dared to go before. "Yes," she said finally. "There was. None of us were here to see it, of course—we'd cleared out as soon as we saw them coming—but you could hear it for miles around."_

_"Who were they?" she asked, withdrawing her hands and pushing them down in two new spots, hoping to smush the entire mountain down. Eventually._

_Out of the corner of her eye she saw Retta shrug. "I don't know, dear," she said. "No one does. Anyone who was close enough to see was—well…" She paused, then said, thoughtfully, "The rumor was—demons. Demons and—and other…things. But no one—no one knows."_

_Laura shivered, not really paying attention to what she was smushing anymore, her mind years back, imagining West Harbor overrun with demons and things. People running, fleeing, loved ones torn from each other. She could practically see them, a wave setting fire to everything in their path, clawing at—at the well, at the communal cow pasture, screams and smoke and ash filling the air…_

_She shivered harder and tried to concentrate on the dough under her hands, which was starting to become flatter to the point where she could rub flour on the rolling pin and start rolling with it instead. Retta hummed tunelessly to herself, stirring things in pots, chopping vegetables and fruits; sunshine shone brightly through the open window, the breeze blowing and bringing some relief from the heat. The scene was so entirely normal that it become easier to forget what her imagination had conjured up for her to see, but she couldn't quite shake her curiosity. So she rolled the dough, flatter and flatter, and finally said, "Retta?"_

_"Yes, dear?"_

_"Why…why was Father…" She struggled, trying to put into words what she had seen, because it was unlike anything she had ever seen Daeghun do before. She'd asked Retta about him often, everything from "Why are his ears pointed and mine not?" to, recently, "Why doesn't he want me to join the militia?" which was what she and Bevil both wanted to do now (Amie thought they were silly, and sniffed from behind the pages of the latest tome Tarmas had given her). Questions she wanted to ask him, or had asked him, but she either couldn't ask, or couldn't understand what the answer was. Retta was as good as translator as anyone else for Daeghun's often inexplicable actions, and she at least knew how to deal with children._

_But she didn't have to finish her question, because Retta stopped stirring and folded her arms, clearly thinking. So she kept rolling, waiting, until Retta finally said, "Daeghun…your father…he…oh, Laura." She went over and stroked her hair, watching her roll for another quiet moment before saying, "Not…not everyone was able to get out of the village in time. And…his wife was one of them. And he…he took it hard, I think. It hurt him—"_

_Laura stopped rolling. Daeghun did not get hurt. Not when he accidentally walked into a briar patch (oh, all right, she accidentally walked into it and he had to follow to get her out), not when they were walking in the Mere and a snake bit him as he shoved her out of the way and he was bleeding and explaining to an hysterical nine-year-old where the antidotes were in his pack, not when people saw her following him and yelled mocking things about his parenting methods (things Laura didn't understand—he was her father, and she loved him; it was remarkably simple). Not ever. Anything that could hurt Daeghun was—was—well, it wasn't right. It wasn't fair. It was wrong wrong wrong and she was suddenly so mad that she wiggled out from under Retta's arms, ignoring her concerned calls, and left the house through the back door._

_She didn't know where she was going. She didn't really care. She was spitting mad (speaking of snakes) and didn't know what to do with herself. It seemed ridiculous for people to be spending time celebrating rebuilding when clearly Daeghun wasn't—wasn't fully—it wasn't fair that something had to hurt him and then have people mock him about it. She knew he loved her, because he never said it, because he said that when people did care about each other it made it harder for—but she was friends with Bevil, didn't that count? And she loved Retta even though Retta was Bevil's mother and not hers, and she loved Daeghun, but it was better not to show it because it just made things harder, and he had cared about his wife and now she was dead and he was paying the price and it wasn't fair for people to yell at him about the way he treated his foster daughter, and how _dare_ anything hurt him? How dare they?_

_She had hopped the fence of West Harbor's boundaries and was headed into the swamp before she knew what she was doing. She shook with anger and fear, anger at the world and fear at how deeply the anger ran. Then she realized that her mother must've died during the battle—she hadn't even thought about that elusive figure yet, but as she came to the realization she grew even angrier, because who was this—this—whoever they were—who were these demons and things to pick West Harbor as a battle place? Why couldn't they fight somewhere else? And they had killed her mother and other people's family and they had hurt Daeghun with their carelessness and she just couldn't stand it._

_The shaking grew worse as she crashed through the swamp, not caring that she was wearing her best boots and that they were getting muck all over them, or that she had forgotten the little knife Daeghun had given her for their travels into the swamp, because thinking about Daeghun simply fueled her rage. She had a good sense of direction, and anything that attempted to accost her at this point would simply end up pounded into a bloody pulp. Her hands clenched just thinking about it._

_She heard a rustling behind her, but ignored it, and she heard the tell-tale hissing and clicking but ignored it too. She felt something hit her back, driving her to her knees, and then something piercing her neck, and before she could land a single punch the world went black._

_**o-o-o**_

_**o-o-o**_

_She woke, feeling surprised and unable to figure out why until she opened her eyes and realized she was still in the swamp, and that one of the swamp beetles had jumped her and she should, by all rights, be dead. Then she thought about what her death (especially from such a stupid, stupid mistake) would do to Daeghun, and she started shaking again._

_She sat up, slowly, drawing her knees to her chest and looping her arms around them before looking around. She seemed to be in some kind of glade, the ground thoroughly solid within it, though she didn't recognize it at all. She rested against the roots of a large swamp tree, the kind that seemed to stand above the ground, and trees similar to it bounded the circular clearing. The one break in this was a large boulder, weathered and covered with moss, but still vaguely recognizable as something carved—one of those ruins people spoke of being in the swamp. At its base was a large, deep pool which, unlike all the other ponds and puddles in the swamp, was completely clear, devoid of the murkiness generally found in swamps._

_Curiosity overwhelmed her, and so she carefully crawled over to it. Her back hurt a little, and her neck throbbed a lot, but when she touched it the skin felt smooth. Her reflection in the pool, however, was a mess; her face was streaked with muck, her hair clumping wildly, full of muck and flour. But there was no blood, no bruises, not even a scratch on her skin. She touched it again, in wonder._

_"You're awake," said a light voice, and she started and barely avoided falling into the pool. She turned to see a man entering the glade, stepping lightly over the roots. He wore simple, black armor, sort of leathery maybe, and his hair was sort of a dark-light brown color. There was something cold about him, something not-quite-right, and she didn't recognize him from West Harbor or, frankly, as belonging anywhere near the Mere. But he smiled when he saw her, and it was a handsome smile, and he reached into a pocket and withdrew a cup._

_"Here," he said, dipping the cup in the pool. "Drink. But slowly; you've had a rough day."_

_"Thank you," she said, wiping her muddy hands on the few non-muddy spots she found on her shirt. She took the cup, sniffing at it, but it looked like water, and so she drank a little. It was clear and cool, and good. "Are you a druid?" she asked._

_He smiled again. "Why do you ask?"_

_"Because," she said. "The water's clean. And only druids can make water clear, and know the Mere well enough to find somewhere like this where the water might be clean anyway."_

_"A good guess," he said, "but no."_

_He was watching her, and so she took another drink, not wanting to appear rude. "Tell me about yourself," he said._

_She paused, the cup resting against her lips, and said, "Are you going to rape me?"_

_"What?"_

_"You're not a druid," she said, "by your own admission. But you're a stranger, and even if you saved my life…I have to be careful."_

_"No," he said, and there was something hard in his face and voice. "No, I'm not going to rape you. I…I abhor such behavior."_

_She nodded, sensing, somehow, that he told the truth, and so she said, "My name is Laura Farthing. I'm the foster daughter of Daeghun Farlong, of West Harbor." She paused, and thought, and couldn't think of anything else to say about herself, so she simply added, "And, if you were lying, he's the best scout in the Mere, and he'd find out and kill you."_

_"You think so."_

_"I know so."_

_"You're a very confident child."_

_She shrugged, and he smiled and reached out a hand, resting it on her head. She resisted the urge to flinch away, and as soon as he touched her she felt a—a warmth through her. His eyes—an icy sort of blue color—stared at her, through her, _into_ her, thoughtful. "An interesting, confident child." He withdrew his hand, and she couldn't resist peeking into the pool—as she'd suspected, her appearance was now completely clean. The situation immediately sprung out of hand. "Tell me," he said, apparently choosing to ignore the sudden fear in her eyes, "why did you come into the Mere today?"_

_"I—" she stopped, remembering, and the shaking began again. This time he reached and took her hand, and she noted that his skin was kind of cold, too. "I had just found out—something, and I was angry, and I wasn't paying attention, and I'm sorry. Thank you," she added belatedly, "for saving my life."_

_He smiled. "You're welcome."_

_"I…something happened," she said, "to Father, and to my village, and I—I—"_

_"You wanted revenge," he said._

_She hadn't thought of it like that, and yet as he said it, it made a certain kind of sense to her. "Yes," she said. "Except I don't know who or what or how to get it. But I—I—they hurt my village. They hurt us, and I want them to pay."_

_He nodded, as though he understood completely, and then his free hand reached up to lightly rest his fingers upon her breastbone. Instinctively she knew it wasn't for any deep or dangerous purpose, simply—as if he knew about the scar that ran down her chest right there—she blushed, but his cold fingers stayed there. A measured look came across his face, then almost a frown._

_"You will," he said, withdrawing his hand. She couldn't help a quiet sigh of relief, and a wry smile came to his face. "You will have it, Laura Farthing, and I can help you achieve it."_

_"You can?" she said, unsure of what she was dealing with—demon or angel?—but instinctively believing him._

_"Yes," he said. "Not now, perhaps, for you are young yet, and your foe is—not. But I can help you, and I will. It will take time—you have much to learn, and few to learn from, and I cannot always come to teach you. But, if you were willing…"_

_She stared at him, and he stared back as he trailed off, both thinking. Finally she said, "Who are you?"_

_"It depends," he said. "In my homeland, which is eons and miles hence, I was once known as many things, cursed and unwanted among them, but I fought and won my place, and they banished me for it. So I wandered until I came here, and I slew another challenger, and now I am simply called Hoar."_

_After a moment she asked, "An avatar?"_

_"A god," he said. "A lesser god, rarely invoked except in times of need. And you have need, Laura Farthing, and I will provide for you, in return for your service."_

_Her eyes wide, she immediately stood in order to sink into the best curtsy she could manage, which made him laugh. "Service?" she asked._

_"Yes," he said. "It's fairly simple, for now. I ask only that you think of me, and remember me, and call on me when you have need. In time…but for today, that is all I ask."_

_She looked up at him, at a lesser god whom no one remembered, and suddenly felt a little sorry for him, and a great rush of affection that nearly overwhelmed her. And his face seemed to brighten, just a little, and she said, "I—I'll do it."_

_He smiled. "Good girl." A black-gloved hand reached into the depths of his armor and withdrew a single coin, which he handed to her. It was cool to the touch as she turned it over: on one side, three lightning bolts, on the other, a two-faced head. "Hold this when you think of me or call on me, and I promise I will listen."_

_"I—thank you," she said, curtsying again._

_"We will speak again," he said, "and you may find this glade whenever you need respite, or to speak with me. For now, though, I think you need to return home."_

_"How?" she asked, and he laughed._

_"Let me take you," he said, and he reached out and she took his hand and for a moment there was a dizzying sense of being everywhere and nowhere at once, of exploding out of her very self to encompass everything and nothing at once, and she felt the painful cries of a million people at once, and she felt him containing her and then her very solid feet were very solidly standing on the very solid ground in front of Daeghun's house. Judging by the sky, it was late afternoon; the feast would be starting soon._

_She looked around, but Hoar was nowhere to be seen; yet she felt his cool fingertips brush her forehead and his voice in her ear, saying, "Remember me," and then she knew he was gone._

_She closed her eyes, reveling in the sense of being wholly material, before clutching his coin in her fist, firmly, and setting out for dinner._

**o-o-o**

**o-o-o**

Outside the sun was setting. Laura went to the fence at the north edge of the property, the one that followed the village's boundary, and leaned against the tall corner post, rubbing her eyes with the heels of her hands.

"Are we having fun yet?" came the low, rough drawl of her second favorite scout.

She sighed, letting her hands fall to her sides, and said, "Are you?"

"Well, there's really not much to do here," he said, leaning against the post next to her; she didn't open her eyes to look, because she could feel his arm touching the length of hers, casual, but insistently present. "Plenty of land to scout, sure, but without a good reason, and with someone else knowing all the ins and outs anyway…"

"Where're the others?" she asked, unable to suppress a nervous twitch of her fingers.

"The paladin's found some clergy man to talk to, the farmgirl's found herself a big farm_man_ to talk planting with, and the tiefling is…doing whatever it is a demon does in a town with zero wealth."

She let his words wash over her without really hearing their meaning; she didn't feel like obligatorily pointing out that they all had real names and were people too, you know. She didn't feel like being laughed at.

Perhaps he could tell, because he said, "What about you? What was so dreadfully important that we had to trek out to the middle of nowhere? Or were you just fleeing your latest promotion? Not that I blame you for that—"

"Lorne," she said tiredly. "Lorne and my mother. That's why we're here."

He paused, and she thought he shifted his weight so that he really did sort of press against her. "You're saying that—"

"No," she said, annoyed. She opened her eyes to glare at him and discovered, for a half-second, a look of calculating concern on his face before he smirked. "I promised Lorne's mother I would bring news of him. And I had to ask Father about my mother."

He eyed her, turning his head to look at her, making his face a lot closer than she preferred. "You know Lorne's mother?"

"She helped raise me," she said. "Any ounce of femininity I have, I owe to her."

Now that was a stupid thing to say, she thought, of all the things to say about Retta, he's a lot closer than he should be—"Hm," he said, his gaze slowly considering her (chain-shirt-wearing, two-days-unwashed, thoroughly-dirty-feeling) body. "No, no, I think you're not giving your real mother enough credit. What'd you learn about her?"

"Nothing really important. Sentimental, I guess." She thought of Daeghun's pain, her hand itching to close around her coin, and winced.

"What, was she—"

"I'm tired," she said flatly. "Too much grief for one day."

He sniffed, in that long, considering way of his, and then said, slowly, "You know, the best way to handle grief is to celebrate life…" His free hand, the one not attached to the arm that was pressing against hers, reached up to touch the back of her head, lightly fingering her hair. He bowed his head in the crook of her neck and shoulder, his nose centimeters from her skin, his breath sending shivers down her back with every word. "There are plenty of patches of wood around here to get lost, let your hair down…"

Her head whipped around—she was shivering, shaking inwardly—and his eyes flicked up to meet hers; amused, smoldering amber met wide, fearful brown framed by too-thick lashes, and his smug smile crinkled the corners of his eyes, and she struggled to narrow hers instead.

"I—no," she said, though her earlier lethargy was gone; he was up and away, hands in the air harmlessly, though the back of her neck still prickled. "We have to be going. G—get the others to the Weeping Willow and I—I'll meet you there."

She vaulted over the fence and started walking, but for a moment the call of his voice saying her name stopped her dead in her tracks.

"Farthing," he said, and she turned back.

"Bishop?"

"Wherever you go," he said, "I'll find you."

She paused, and shrugged, and turned away again. His laughter followed her, making her shiver in the warm, humid swamp; she shook because she knew one small part of her was waiting patiently for the day he caught her, and planned to relish it when he did.


	9. Chapter 9

**Title:** Not Yet by Lightning

**Chapter:** Nine

**Author:** Jade Sabre

**Notes:** Sorry this one is so late—school ended and I had to go home, and my internet at home is spotty at best. I hope to stay with the one-update-a-week schedule, but I can't make any promises.

This was one of the last chapters I wrote, and I decided to take it from a slightly different perspective. Here's the second of the Hoar chapters; let me know what you think!

**Disclaimer:** I don't own Neverwinter Nights, or any of its sequels or expansions, or any of the characters contained herein, aside from my PC, who was created on a Bioware engine and thus probably therefore partially belongs to them too.

* * *

**9**

Neeshka sat in the Phoenix Tail with a tankard of ale in front of her. It was early afternoon, the sun still high and bright in the sky, but she wasn't much for daytime, and with her schedule so reversed it made a kind of sense for her to be drinking this early. Besides, there wasn't really anything else to do. No one seemed to have any sort of plan or pressing agenda. Elanee was off communing with nature, as usual, while Grobnar spent all his time with his crazy machine, and Sand watched Qara as closely as possible; the sorceress seemed content to laze about the Keep, complaining about boredom but not taking any particular measures to counteract it. She didn't know or particularly care where Casavir was (oh, he was nice enough, but she didn't really like being in the same room with him for more than two minutes), and Khelgar was in the Tail with her, as was Bishop.

Shandra had been with them, until a few minutes previous, when she had shoved back her barstool and said, "I can't take this anymore."

Her voice, always loud, seemed unusually so in the stark silence of the near-empty inn. Neeshka had glanced at her, tail twitching, but hadn't really cared to say anything.

"I'm going to go find her. See what I can do."

"Good luck," Khelgar said, and Neeshka echoed him, but she wasn't really feeling up to any more enthusiasm. She felt horribly out of sorts, the way she had a few times before in her life, though never to this degree.

And so she sat with her ale, waiting for someone to come along and say that they needed her, that they wanted her, that there was a lock to be picked or a trap foreseen or something that she could actually work on, a problem she could actually solve. She wanted to feel _useful_, damn it, but no one seemed to have any clue what to do next. They just…sat.

The door to the Tail opened, and Neeshka knew instantly that the newcomer was just that, someone new, someone who had never been to the Keep before—from the careworn state of his cloak to the way he gawked at her as if he had never seen the horned, tailed girl walking around with the Captain of the whole place as an honored companion. She returned his rude stare with a lash of her tail—she didn't really care all that much anymore, but it was something to do—and then went back to her ale, offering him a cold shoulder.

He approached the bar. He was a youngish man, probably around her own age, his brown hair afflicted with a bowl-cut and his chin lacking the rugged perpetual shadow that Bishop maintained, instead sprinkled with sparse growth that begged desperately for a shave. Still, she thought his expression was open, honest, and figured that he'd be an easy mark if he looked like he had more than two coins to rub together. Which, as it came out in his ensuing conversation with Sal, he didn't.

He sat a fair distance away from her down the bar, on the other side from Khelgar, closer to where Bishop leaned against the wall and glowered uselessly at everyone. He looked inclined to make conversation, but Neeshka and the others did their best to indicate it wasn't particularly welcome. Well, she would've welcomed it—she was _dying_ for something, anything new, anything to distract her from the fact that they were doing nothing—but it seemed disrespectful, somehow, like she hadn't gotten permission to speak. Not that she needed permission to speak, just that there was a moratorium on conversation that had been issued and which she didn't feel inclined to fight it.

Finally, though, the young man had enough. "This is Crossroad Keep, isn't it?" he said, glancing at the bar's other occupants.

"Aye," said Sal, washing a mug that he'd probably already washed three times that day.

"And Laura Farthing's the captain of it, yes?"

"Aye, and a good lass she is, too," Sal said, adding the latter as an afterthought.

The young man nodded, and the others, having said just about all there was to say on the subject of Crossroad Keep and its mistress (or at least all there was to say to an outsider, to someone who wasn't _there _and hadn't _seen_), went back to their ale.

"Do you know where I could find her? I'd like to talk to her."

"About what?" Khelgar said, gruffly, already suspicious. Neeshka laughed into her drink, pitying the poor fool who wanted to ask Laura for help getting his cat out of his tree, the poor fool who had to go through Khelgar's Dwarven Defense Mechanism first.

"Things," he said, looking surprised. "Stuff."

Bishop laughed, then, a sound that unhinged Neeshka's spine. She was no stranger to men of Bishop's breed—they excited her, in a way, as much as any man had managed to excite her (and Leldon had tried, but oh man, she had _so_ many better things to be doing)—but Bishop had played his role so well it crept/creeped her out. "Good luck with _that_," he said.

"Why d'you say that?" the newcomer asked, clearly unnerved and just as clearly unwilling to be intimidated. Neeshka saw the telltale curl of Bishop's lip and sighed into her drink. Oh well. Might as well enjoy the show as not. At least it was something different. And male posturing would never cease to be amusing.

"Well, she's a very busy, important lady," Bishop said casually, still leaning against the wall. "She has a lot more to worry about than your things. And…stuff."

"I think she'll see me," he said, still putting a little too much effort into appearing not intimidated. Neeshka laughed to herself.

"Why?"

"I'm her friend. We grew up together." He had clearly played his trump card; his entire voice was smug as he finished, "My name's Bevil. Bevil Starling. And I'd like to know where Laura is."

"Starling…" Bishop laughed again, softly this time, and said, "You hear about your brother Lorne?"

Neeshka shifted in her seat, immediately reevaluating the stranger. He wasn't scrawny by any means, but it was a little difficult to imagine that this guy was related to that huge berserker. Still, it meant he could be dangerous. She wondered how Bishop knew that in the first place.

"Yeah, I did," he said. "I'm not my brother. I—"

"You hear about your mother?"

The kid finally took the hint, and backed down a notch; his voice was much more uncertain as he said, "What about my mother?"

Bishop shrugged. "Just that there's a reason that it's so hard to get a hold of the _Captain_ these days."

"What does that have to do with my mother?"

"It has to do with the fact that she's dead." He didn't linger on the word, but Neeshka could see a bit of satisfaction in his eyes as he watched the younger man recoil instantly. "Very dead, in fact. Just like everyone else who lived in your little West Harbor."

Bevil stared at him, and then twisted in his seat to look at Sal, who merely nodded, and then at Neeshka, who shrugged and offered him an apologetic grimace. Khelgar offered his tankard in a brief salute and proceeded to gulp down half of it. Realizing that he wasn't going to get anything out of them, he returned to his dubious information source and said, "The whole village…?"

"Destroyed. Razed, even. It's not very pretty." Bishop had a knack for sounding like he thought exactly the opposite of what he was saying.

He absorbed this news for a minute, sitting heavily (he struck her as being very heavy, the kind of person who couldn't step lightly if their life depended on it) on his stool, before finally saying, "How?"

"Well, everyone's got enemies. Farthing's enemies just happen to be a little more powerful than most. And destructive."

"And Laura?"

For just a moment, Bishop's cocky, self-assured aloofness vanished. He covered it by saying nastily, "Well, no one's seen her in a week," then recovered himself and said simply, "She…didn't take it well."

No, Neeshka thought to herself. No, she really didn't.

**o-o-o**

**o-o-o**

As soon as they went through the portal, Neeshka knew something was wrong. Something about the entire place _felt_ wrong, felt…evil, and she knew it was evil because it was tugging on her blood like no call she'd ever felt before—and she'd met her fair share of demons trying to reclaim her as one of their own. It made her horns throb and her tail twitch, pulling her by invisible strings. She blinked and looked around, trying to push it out of her mind, but their surroundings only increased her agitation.

The place—wherever they were—was a scene from one of the Hells—a village destroyed, burned to the ground, the charred houses still smoking. They stood on the outskirts, at the top of a hill, overlooking the little undulations in the earth that folded into miniature valleys once fruitful, now little more than heaps of ruined wood and stone. The sky was the same grey as the smoke, the air thick with whatever magic had wrought this destruction. Neeshka pulled her tail close, unable to control its lashings.

Shandra broke the silence. "What _is _this place? It looks like a ruined village, but…it looks…" It was as if she couldn't bring herself to say what she was thinking.

"It is." Bishop's voice was clipped, a marked difference from his usual drawl. "We've been here before. Haven't we?"

Neeshka followed his glance to their leader, who stood motionless, staring down at the wreckage. Laura's face betrayed absolutely nothing, so it was left to Casavir to say, "This is…West Harbor?"

"What's left of it," Shandra said. "Why did we come _here_?"

"_Know _that this is not where we were meant to come," Zhjaeve said; even the gith sounded unnerved. "I do not know what has caused this—"

"Demons. Devils," Neeshka said, knowing it to be true as soon as she said it. "Not shadows. Hit by the Lower Planes."

"What on earth would the Lower Planes—Laura?"

The Captain had finally moved: one step, and then another, jerky, mechanical motions, heading down the hill and into the village proper. Neeshka glanced around the others' expressions; Shandra looked bewildered, and Casavir pained, while Zhjaeve—well, who cared what she felt, if anything—and Bishop was so withdrawn he almost rivaled the human cleric's impassivity. She shrugged, not particularly wanting to immerse herself in the demon-soaked debris, but not entirely willing to let Laura continue on alone.

Casavir made the choice to follow, and they fell into line behind him, silently stepping in their leader's footprints as she wound her way around the back of the village, skirting houses and following fences until she went up another hill to stop and stare at the remains of the house perched at the hill's summit. It had once been two stories, but the upper one had collapsed, and the lower one shattered under its weight, the wooden supports snapped in half and further weakened from the flames. Neeshka shivered again: the sky was turning darker by the minute, the air rapidly cooling as whatever fires had been there dwindled, leaving only the tang of sulfur in the air.

"Why are we here?" Shandra repeated.

"I do not know," Zhjaeve answered again, turning to her leader. "This is your birth village?"

Laura stared at the house and didn't answer.

"I'd take that as a yes," Bishop said, his expression still completely neutral, his eyes watching Laura with more concentration than Neeshka had ever seen him exhibit towards anything. She didn't blame him; if she hadn't been so—so—_wiggly_ with the demon taint, she would have tried to do something. As it was, she tried to keep from giving into her urge to add insult to injury and set fire to the smoking structure.

"You were born _here_?" Shandra said. "You're a Mere kid?"

Laura responded in Elvish; or maybe she wasn't responding to Shandra at all, because there was something plaintive and young in her voice as she called out to the…house, from all appearances. There was, unsurprisingly, no response, and she bowed her head, at it was then that Neeshka noticed, with some curiosity, that the cleric was trembling. She gripped her elbows and stood there, shaking, and probably wouldn't have moved again if Zhjaeve had not spoken.

"Are there any Illefarn ruins near this village? We must be moving. _Know_ that lingering here—"

Laura turned, sharply but with great deliberateness, and looked as if she was about to speak. But instead she strode past them, apparently intent on cutting through the village in order to reach the swamp on the other side. Neeshka couldn't help glancing at the wreckage as they passed; here, two bodies, young men bearing clubs; there, across the river, slaughtered animals, their eyes open and glassy even as their entrails spilled out in some sort of bizarre fortune-telling ritual. There was nothing deliberate about this destruction, aside from its wantonness, if it could be deliberate in its wholesale chaos.

Zhjaeve repeated her question, just as Shandra demanded again to know _why_ they were here, and Zhjaeve started to answer something about interference and great evil when Laura stopped, so suddenly Shandra nearly crashed into her. The cleric reacted instantly, shoving the other woman away from her, so that all her companions instinctively stayed a few feet back, lost and not a little afraid. But she didn't move; she just stared down at the ground, at whatever had caught her eye, her hands clenched into shaking fists as her side.

"Watch it, she's going to—" Bishop spoke, but no one comprehended; muttering curses at them all, he shoved through the group and managed to catch Laura just as her knees buckled and her mace fell from her limp grip. Something which was remarkably like pity, but on Bishop was more likely hatred, crossed his face, and then he slapped her with his free gloved hand.

"Stop that!" Casavir said, finally springing into action, stepping forward too late to save the swooning lady but perhaps in time to spare her further indignities. "She has merely fainted. It is not to be—"

"Then _you_ hold her," Bishop snapped, but Casavir, rather than taking her, blocked Bishop's second slap. "She's got to wake up somehow—"

Neeshka saw Laura crumple in on herself, shaking violently, and Bishop freed his hand from Casavir's grip in order to support her, wrapping both arms around her waist. "You fucking _useless_—"

And then she screamed.

Neeshka had never heard a sound like that before in her life—it sounded as though someone had reached inside the girl with a barbed hook, latching onto her anguish and pulling it out as slowly as possible, jostling it against her innards, piercing and bruising, drawing out every primal feeling within. Casavir reached out to lay his hands on her—to do anything to stop the pain—but Bishop took a step back, jerking her away. On the ground behind him lay a woman's body—a grey-haired woman, though beyond that she was too much a part of the mud and the smoke to be discernable. Thunder rumbled in a sky as black as the look on Bishop's face. The noise stopped for the space of a breath, and then resumed; the ranger planted himself as she screamed, his arms acting as a fulcrum as she doubled over, her feet kicking against his shins.

"Hit her!" Bishop snarled, and Casavir, dumbstruck, did exactly as he said; his slap lacked the force of Bishop's malice, but the harsher steel of his gauntlets seemed to penetrate the fog of—pain, and gods only knew what else. She gasped and looked up, her face blurred by grief and twisted with confusion. She stood under her own power and spun around to discover who was holding her; it looked as though Bishop said something, because she snarled and jerked as far away as she could, considering he wasn't loosening his grip.

And then she cried, as though she thought he might know, "Why?"

"Doesn't have to be a reason," he answered, his expression almost as angry as hers.

"_Why_?" He didn't answer; she twisted and he let her go, but she didn't even seem to notice what she was doing, simply repeating, "_Why_?"

"No one's got the answer to that," Shandra muttered, looking as disturbed as Neeshka felt.

"Fuck that!" Laura snapped, whirling on them; they shrank away, and Bishop tapped her shoulder, as if to redirect her rage. It worked; she turned back to him, still more angry than grieved, and screamed, "Why? Why did I bother? Why the fuck did I leave? Why bother when I'm just going to—why—" She threw back her head and howled, "My _god_, tell me why the _fuck_ I should keep trying!"

The lightning bolt hit so close that Neeshka could feel her hair standing on end, her every cell jolted to a new level of awareness. The tangy ozone washed away the sulfur; the white light blinded her to everything, leaving only blank brightness in its place. She was _cold_, so cold, and so she hugged herself while she blinked herself back from blindness.

She saw it in the space of two blinks—Laura, standing rigid, and a man behind her who she resolutely ignored; then, for the briefest moment, Laura sobbing, and the man wrapping his arms around her while she cried. When she looked again, there was only Laura and Bishop, and Casavir; but Bishop looked distinctly unsettled, shifting from foot to foot, and Neeshka knew it hadn't been him who had tried to comfort the Captain in her grief.

As for Laura, she stood as implacably as she had on their arrival, but shock had given way to determination. Neeshka stared at her, still unnerved, concentrating so hard that the first raindrop made her jump. Bishop laughed at her, a rude, out-of-place sound, and thunder rumbled, almost in response.

Laura turned to Zhjaeve; when she spoke, her voice was as quiet and calm as always. "My father hid the shard in ruins out in the swamp. It's not far. Follow me."

They did, of course. They always did. Frankly, where else was there to go?

**o-o-o**

**o-o-o**

"The whole place. Completely destroyed." Bevil seemed to be having trouble taking it in.

"Yeah," Bishop said. "Lots of burned buildings. Smell of sulfur in the air. A case study in destroyed villages."

Neeshka wondered at the lack of bite in his voice—she had no doubt that Bishop was mocking this kid, but he was doing a much better job of hiding it than he normally did. She felt sorry for the guy, but didn't have anything to say that would make the picture any better.

"I…" He shook his head; Sal refilled his tankard without being asked. "I just went away for a few weeks. I—did—they're all dead?"

"As far as I could tell. Didn't really get a chance to investigate." There was the sardonic grin. Neeshka breathed an internal sigh of relief.

"Didn' look like they put up much of a fight, from what Casavir says," Khelgar offered. "Probably didn' have th' time. So it was quick."

Bevil's eyes had taken on the haunted look Neeshka had seen in Laura's eyes, right before the cleric detached herself from the group and disappeared within the confines of her keep. Her tail twitched in sympathy. He was probably making a list of all the people he had known, and how they were all dead now. Well, Laura wasn't dead, but nobody had dared to disturb her—

"You are going to sit down, and you are going to get a drink, and you are going to be social." Shandra's voice had all the force of a kid playing at military commander, and all the whine as well. Impossibly, she was propelling someone in front of her as she entered the bar, steering the other woman past Bishop's now-amused stare as she continued to lecture. "Brooding doesn't do anybody any good, you know. Drink first, then—"

Bevil stood up so fast he overturned his bar stool. The sound distracted the two women; Shandra frowned in confusion, while Laura's face stayed as blank as it had been, staring at him. "Can I…help you?" Shandra said, peering over her captain's shoulder.

"Laura?" He was so pathetic Neeshka almost wanted to _aw_; his eyes threatening to fill with tears, his lower lip trembling.

She opened her mouth, closed it, and finally said, "How?"

Shandra looked over at Neeshka, who shrugged, while Bevil said, "Your father took me along on a scouting mission—"

"Father?"

"We only split up yesterday; he sent me here to see you, while he went home, but this man just told me—" He didn't seem to see Laura glance at Bishop, who shrugged, that same mocking pity on his face, an expression that made Neeshka shudder "—and now I don't—"

She reached out and took his hand between hers; it occurred to Neeshka that it was the first time she'd ever seen the captain voluntarily offer physical comfort to anyone. "Come with me. We can talk." She looked over her shoulder at Shandra and asked, a faint smile on her face, "Is that social enough to satisfy you?"

"I—yeah," Shandra said, still looking utterly confused, and then Laura practically dragged her childhood friend—her _only_ childhood friend—out the door, as if hoping to escape before everyone realized she had tears in her eyes. Neeshka had seen them, if only because she had never seen them there before.

"Who's he?" Shandra asked, sitting back down next to Neeshka and picking up Bevil's abandoned refill.

"Friend," Neeshka said with a shrug.

"Survivors," Bishop said, scowling into his mug. "That's just sloppy, leaving survivors."

"Lucky, you mean," Khelgar said. "The lass's finally talkin' again. Maybe we can _do_ somethin' about th' place now."

"Well thank the gods, by all means," the ranger said, slamming his mug down on the bar. "I've spent too long in this damn place anyway. Going for some fresh air."

"Don't care!" Neeshka called after him, then finally took a swig from her ale and turned to Shandra. "Where'd you find her?"

"The chapel. Don't think she's left there since we got back. She's got to be starving."

"More likely thirsty." Neeshka smiled to herself; at Shandra's blank look, she said, "For revenge?"

"Oh." Shandra looked at her ale. "I don't know if I want to be around to see that."

"Cheer up," Neeshka said. "Maybe you won't be." At Shandra's raised eyebrow, she shrugged and said, "Maybe we'll have found you a new farmhouse by then."

"I'll drink to that," Shandra said, and they crashed their tankards together, and drank.


	10. Chapter 10

Title: Not Yet by Lightning

**Title: **Not Yet by Lightning

**Chapter:** Ten

**Author:** Jade Sabre

**Notes:** I wrestled a bit with this one, and decided in the end to let it stand as I originally wrote it, and hope that y'all know Laura well enough by now to guess at what's going through her head in this instance. This is the last of the Hoar chapters, and puts us almost halfway through the entire fic. I hope y'all are still enjoying it. Reviews, as always, would be lovely.

**Disclaimer:** I don't own Neverwinter Nights, or any of its sequels or expansions, or any of the characters contained herein, aside from my PC, who was created on a Bioware engine and thus probably therefore partially belongs to them too.

* * *

**10**

Bishop didn't so much join the group as insinuate himself into it: he offered to stay, served as a guide around Ember, and next thing they knew he accompanied them to the Keep. Laura didn't mind; she neither invited him nor asked him to leave. Personally he was unreliable and untrustworthy, but he did his job and believed everyone else should be able to do theirs. Not without some heckling, of course, but as long as she didn't order him around she was safe, for the most part. And he liked how calmly she approached problems, and he liked her creed. She suspected some of his support was mocking her for giving her life away, and some was especially vocal for Casavir's benefit; but he stayed, so she figured some of it was actual respect.

Sand thirsted for knowledge of her god, and confused, she warily gave it to him. He absorbed it with a dry, scholarly gleam in his eyes, and one day he showed her the report he had written on her faith and told her he was bound to turn it over to Nasher. Angered, she took it from him and asked if he considered himself a Tyrran spy.

"Oh no," he said. "I'm too guilty for their tenets, and too cowardly for yours."

"Then don't turn it in," she said.

He took it back. "Never fear, dear girl. I take your threats very seriously. You need never fear betrayal from my corner."

She watched him closely after that, but aside from his natural curiosity about everything, he showed no sign of ever planning on turning in his report. She knew, of course, that by now everyone had figured out that Neverwinter's latest hero was a cleric, and that anyone who spent any time in close proximity to her would have noticed the symbols and prayers she put her faith in—the thunderstorm, the iterations of others' faults, the icy sleet, the code of the innocent. New acquaintances treated her warily, afraid of causing offense, while those who knew her well—as well as anyone did—kept their jokes to themselves out of respect for her piety. Her companions in particular accepted her beliefs as part of the package, and generally supported her—but every now and then she would catch the same wary fear in their eyes.

Zhjaeve was harder to read. Zhjaeve seemed to live in her own special kind of reality, where Laura was a hero and heroes always lived through their battles. She was not psychic, yet even when her statements proved false she never wavered in her claims of knowledge. Laura always felt a sort of disappointment underlying the githzerai's steady support, because she was not a hero, because she relied on another for her power and strength. Being a creature of the planes, it made sense for her to doubt the strength of the gods; but she never voiced this discontent, and Laura was grateful.

She became Captain of Crossroad Keep and immediately installed a chapel for general usage. She'd never had a chapel of her own before, and found she didn't know how to decorate it according to her own faith; the other members of her order were scattered throughout Faerûn, and so she elected to leave the place bare, in order that others might use it for their own needs. She consecrated one corner to Hoar, near the western window, and spent at least an hour there every night, and while her underlings might view her beliefs with fear or disgust, no one dared to argue with her.

**o-o-o**

**o-o-o**

Zhjaeve openly defied her, once. They were gathered in the main room of the Phoenix Tail while a storm beat down on the roof, darkening the torch-lit interior. A fire roared in the fireplace, almost drowning out the sound of rain on the chimney, and Sal was unusually silent as he went around filling everyone's glass. Neeshka sat in front of the fire, knees pulled up to her chest and tail pulled in tight, next to Khelgar, who had pulled up a chair and sat with his feet brushing the ground, staring into his mug of ale. Grobnar stood awkwardly near the wall, his normally busy hands empty, looking lost; Elanee stood next to him, silently offering comfort, while Casavir stood a little to the other side of her, closer to the fire. Qara sat at a table, pretending nonchalance, while Sand sat next to her, his fingers clenched around his wineglass. Bishop leaned against the wall, next to where the bar counter ran into it, lurking in the little shadow he found, while Laura sat on a stool a few feet away from him, facing the wall and not the fireplace, where Zhjaeve stood with their newest addition.

The warlock's tattoos glowed from within, adding their own ghastly light to the flickering firelight across his face, turning the shadows gold. His clothes were ratty and smelled of smoke; his beard looked rough, and his face was hard in its expressionless façade. He stood facing the fire and not the people gathered around him. His voice crunched like gravel underfoot, gruff and harsh as he answered the githzerai's questions and gave his own brief, remorseless explanation for his previous actions.

When he was finished, the room was silent again, the crackling of the fire echoing strangely against the steady _thump_ of the rain. There was a tremor in Laura's shoulders, but other than that the Knight Captain sat motionless, facing away from all of them. The others glanced to her and then back at their hands, or the drinks held therein, waiting for her judgment, listless.

Her voice, when it came, was as flat and pragmatic as always, in a low, dangerous tone. "Explain to me why any of this matters."

"Know that he is the one who has completed the final Ritual of Purification," Zhjaeve said.

"And?" she said.

"And you lose the battle against the King of Shadows the second you strike me down," Jerro said.

"Why?"

"Know that the Ritual of Purification is the only way to weaken the King of Shadows—" Zhjaeve began.

"—and without it, even bearing the Sword of Gith will not help you," he finished.

There was a long pause after that. Bishop ended it with his usual bloody opinion. "I say we find some way to transfer it, and then kill him."

"We will _not_ answer murder with murder," Casavir said, his response riding on Bishop's final words.

"Oh, I _really_ don't think that's true," Bishop said, at the same time Laura said, "I wonder at your confidence."

The others looked in alarm at their leader's back; Bishop had a view of her profile and could see how her jaw was clenched, her arms trembling as she locked her fingers around her tankard, trying to suppress her shaking. He smirked without mirth.

"Laura—" Elanee said.

"_Know_ that if you kill him, our cause is lost," Zhjaeve said.

"Then what?" Laura said.

"Yeah," Neeshka spoke up, the tip of her tail thumping against the floor. "When does he pay for what he did to Shandra?"

"Whatever punishments you think I deserve," Jerro said, "I assure you I will suffer a thousandfold at the hands of your relatives, tiefling—"

"After you die." Laura's words were flat, yet had the hint of a question about them.

"Yes."

"Which once again leads me to ask why you aren't dead yet."

Exasperated, he turned around, ignoring the glares he received to focus on her back. "Have you not listened to a word I've said? If you kill me—"

"And I still don't see why I care," she said. She turned on her stool and met his blistering yellow gaze with her own, her eyes dark and fathomless. "If I want revenge for myself, if I want to accomplish my goals, they tell me you must live. But while you live, who takes revenge for Shandra?" Her voice shook as she lost control, unable to hide the twitching of her limbs as she crossed her arms and stared at him. "How can I let you live? You don't deserve to exist."

"I wish to rectify—"

"Rectifying your error does not restore Shandra to the living," she said, her words a cold slap to the face. His expression shifted to one of murder. "There is no forgiveness for one such as you. There is no _life_ for one such as you, and yet I must let you live." She swallowed and suddenly broke his gaze, looking to the ceiling as if she could see to the storm beyond. "And what does that make me?"

Lightning flashed outside, followed by an instantaneous crack of thunder loud enough to rattle the windows. Only Laura was unperturbed, trembling in her seat for a moment longer before sliding to her feet and crossing to him in one fluid motion, reaching under her tunic and withdrawing a well-worn coin. Before the warlock could react she pressed it to the side of his neck, her voice suddenly as harsh and guttural as his as she uttered archaic words laced with spite and hate. White light burned from beneath her hand, the air in the room freezing as she spoke.

She pulled her hand away and spat at his feet, then turned and stalked out of the inn, into the storm. Jerro lifted a hand to his neck, feeling the icy skin and the shape of the mark she had left—round, with three lightning bolts indented in his flesh.

Bishop laughed, then, a drawling, mocking sound that startled the somber awe in the room. "You know what this is?" the warlock demanded, wheeling around to glare at him.

"She's marked you for protection," the ranger said, smug. "To keep herself from killing you."

"How do you know that?" Neeshka said. "She have to mark you too for something, huh?"

"Oh, but what could I _possibly_ have done to need it?" The sneer on his face was impenetrable. "Good luck with that," he added, looking back to Jerro. "That's what you get, crossing a cleric of Hoar. She can find you whenever she wants, and when she doesn't need you anymore…"

Jerro looked around, but none of the others looked particularly helpful: most were glaring at him, while the paladin just looked consternated, as if he wanted to offer reassurances but could think of nothing true to say. He grunted once, and turned back to the fire; one by one, the others turned back to their drinks, and their grief.


	11. Chapter 11

**Title:** Not Yet by Lightning

**Chapter:** Eleven

**Author:** Jade Sabre

**Notes:** This was the first chapter I ever wrote, you guys! I wrote it…last August. That being said, it's probably a little rougher than all the other chapters—I spent some time revising it, and making it fit more with everything else I've written, but it still feels a little, well, like the first chapter I wrote. This marks a minor deviation from the OC—nothing too big, but it establishes the tone for the rest of the fic in several ways. I hope y'all like it…or are, at least, gentle in expressing your displeasure. In either case, write a review and let me know!

**Disclaimer:** I don't own Neverwinter Nights, or any of its sequels or expansions, or any of the characters contained herein, aside from my PC, who was created on a Bioware engine and thus probably therefore partially belongs to them too.

* * *

**11**

"Wait a minute…she's waking up!" someone said. "She's alive, we've got her, we can go _now_,"and she felt herself being picked up and carried in the arms of someone running the hell away from wherever they were. Slowly the pieces of memory fell into place—Zhjaeve and Qara, and Sydeny Natale and the True Names, and facing the Shadow Reaver and oh. She must have died, then. Or almost died.

She was slung into a horse's saddle and someone got up behind her and rode like hell and the bumps were so jarring she decided it would be less painful—because the pain was catching up as she remembered all the hits she had taken—to pass out again.

**o-o-o**

**o-o-o**

When she woke up the first thing she remembered was that she had died, and she organized her thoughts around that fact. It was odd, knowing that you were the only one who could do a task, and yet occasionally were overwhelmed in battle. She had crossed the line a few times before, and every time it was remarkably disconcerting to come back and realize that everyone else had, for a few moments, been paralyzed by the sense of doom that came with knowing all your hopes for stopping the ultimate evil of the day had just fallen. She thought it was ridiculous that so many hopes were often singular, and was somewhat grateful that Ammon Jerro had completed the last part of the Ritual of Purification. Though they were useless without each other, and though she hated the man, it lessened some of the burden on her.

She opened her eyes and realized that she was lying in her bedroll around the fire circle, and that dawn had just come and therefore Zhjaeve was praying her prayers and she really ought to as well. She struggled to sit up and discovered Neeshka on watch, grinning at her.

"Welcome back, Captain," the tiefling said, her expression relaying none of the fear Laura had expected.

"It's good to be…back," she said, wincing horribly as she put her head in both hands.

"She up? She moving?"

Bishop appeared from the surrounding woods, carrying what was probably supposed to be breakfast, but Laura's headache nauseated her, so she sat back and watched while the others ate, trying to concentrate on healing spells for herself. She felt a little better as time went on, but she didn't lift her head, preferring to listen to how her companions interacted when she wasn't really around. It was unsurprisingly quiet, aside from good-natured quips between Neeshka and Khelgar (she once again thanked all the gods involved in helping the two reconcile their differences). Zhjaeve wasn't particularly talkative, and Bishop wasn't either. After a few minutes of observation, she gathered that Bishop was in a bad mood, and none of the others knew why, or particularly cared to brave the surly ranger's rhetoric to find out.

They mounted up again once breakfast was over; the place where the Shadow Reaver had been wasn't more than a day's ride from the Keep, but apparently they'd made camp for the night, probably for the sake of her convalescence. To her surprise, it was Bishop who casually picked her up and threw her into the saddle before mounting up behind her, his manner and expressions all calm and caustic indifference, his grip on her waist unusually tight. They rode straight for the Keep and were mercifully unhindered—Laura wasn't sure she would be able to stand up yet—and she sent them to gather the others at the Phoenix Tail Inn while she reported to Nevalle.

The other knight was suitably excited to hear of the Shadow Reaver's defeat and quickly left to dispatch a letter to Nasher, leaving Laura alone in her courtyard. Despite the months she had spent at the Keep, it was still difficult to absorb the fact that this was really hers, totally and completely, and that she was in _charge_ of every life that pledged itself to her walls. She had never envisioned herself with that degree of responsibility towards any one thing, and truthfully she wasn't sure she wanted it; it was at once gratifying and terrifying to walk amidst her people and see them bow to her, looking to _her_ for answers when lately she wasn't sure she even had questions anymore. And it was lonely, keeping that lack of certainty to herself, because her people needed a leader who was confident and sure.

She entered the Inn and Sal, upon seeing her, immediately ordered a round for everyone in the building. Her companions had gathered chairs near the fireplace, settling into their usual factions: Zhjaeve and Jerro at either end, aloof and unconcerned, while Neeshka and Khelgar took up the middle, jostling with each other and complaining loudly about the kind of business Sal allowed in his establishment, and Elanee stood to the side, watching over them with good-natured exasperation. Qara tried to sit away from Sand, although this usually ended up with her sitting next to Jerro, as no one wanted to get close to either of them, and Sand sat next to Zhjaeve, inching away from Khelgar and settling his robes like a mildly disgruntled cat. Casavir stood on his other side and Bishop, his indifferent expression toying with a smirk that promised trouble, casually dropped into the available seat next to the paladin. Grobnar sat in the chair between the ranger and Khelgar, an oversized quill and pad of paper in his hands, childishly excited as he always was to be included in these meetings. As for herself, she took her pint and leaned against the mantle and waited for them to quiet down, smiling a little to herself but otherwise too tired to show any emotion.

"What's the occasion?" Sand asked, his look one of long-suffering. Understandable, as he was usually stuck babysitting Aldanon and Qara; she made a note to find something more interesting for him to do, and to hand over the scrolls she had found on the Shadow Reaver's body.

"Victory," Zhjaeve said. "Know that we have won this day—"

"Aye, and what a victory!" Khelgar broke in, immediately launching into a description of the battle for Grobnar, who took notes, practically bouncing with excitement.

"Don't forget the part where our noble leader bit the dust," Bishop said, leaning across and using the gnome's head for an armrest.

"What?" Casavir said, far too quickly for his own good. Laura directed her gaze at the portrait over the fireplace as Bishop said, "Oh, yeah. Took a good hard hit from one of the blade golems. Went down like—"

"But we rescued her," Zhjaeve said, "and she lives still. Know that this is what truly matters."

Bishop's mouth twisted in an ugly parody of a smile. Casavir said, anxiously, "You are all right, my lady?"

She managed a thin smile in return. "Hale and hearty, as always, Casavir." She hoped he couldn't see how her legs were trembling with the effort of keeping her up; she would have to sit down soon.

"Thank the gods."

"Oh, I doubt they had anything to do with it," said the ranger. "More like Zhjaeve noticing before it was too late to do anything. Not that she's much help, either." He took a deep swig from his tankard and scowled down into it. He leaned across Grobnar again, provoking a "Hey!" as he said, "Oh, and don't forget the devil-girl—"

"_Demon_," Neeshka protested.

"—tripped over her own two feet—"

"I did not!"

"Bishop," Laura said, and from the way everyone stopped and stared she was uncomfortably aware of how they were keyed to her voice. He looked at her and she realized she had spoken without a suitable follow-up, and so she steeled herself and said, "A word with you when we're finished here."

"Certainly, _Captain_," he said.

She returned her attention to Zhjaeve. The githzerai nodded and said, "This victory strikes a great blow against the King of Shadows. We should focus our efforts on finding as many Shadow Reavers as we can while we wait for the results of Aldanon's search for Nolaloth."

Jerro, of course, had something testy to say about his own knowledge concerning the dead wyrm, but as far as Laura was concerned the meeting was essentially over. She concentrated on standing up and finishing her ale, drinking it slowly and using it as an excuse not to speak. She wasn't quite sure what she was going to say to Bishop—something along the lines of perhaps not abusing every single one of her companions every single day, although ultimately she knew such a conversation would be pointless and would probably only steel his determination to increase the number of future insults. Slowly everyone removed themselves, either to other parts of the common room or to other areas of the Keep, and she caught Bishop's eye and nodded to the door. He downed the rest of his drink and stood, the ugly smirk still on his face. She ignored the expression and left the common room, assuming he would follow.

She intended to lead him back away from the buildings to talk, but she had only gotten around the back of the Tail when he suddenly slammed into her, pressing her back against the wall. She opened her mouth to speak and suddenly his mouth was on hers, his lips insistently parting hers when she clammed up, frozen with shock, tugging and pulling, his hands cradling her head as if he could pull the skin right off the skull, long, needy kisses that immediately removed what lingering ability she had to stand on her own two feet. There was no way for her to break away; her head was back against the wall, his body weighing down against hers, keeping her in place, her arms trapped by her side and curling instinctively, her legs buckling. And he was _kissing_ her and she'd never really been kissed before and she had no idea why he was kissing her except she knew this was perhaps what came of making talk with strange men over tankards late at night.

He pushed her into the wall as he pushed himself away, turning and ending up in a similar position to her, breathing heavily but otherwise completely expressionless. She was sure he could hear her heart beating a thousand times too fast, but mostly she was afraid to look at him, to say anything, to figure out—

"What in the Nine Hells was _that_?" Her voice found itself and took over.

There was a long pause, and then he said in his lowest, most spine-tingling drawl, "You died, and I didn't get the chance to fuck you."

She processed this for half a second, half a second in which to interpret and decide and act, and she turned so _she_ was the one pushing _him_ into the wall, and she said, "What do you want?"

He stared straight at her, as impassively as she knew she was looking back at him, and then he kissed her again, his lips leaving her mouth and tracing her jaw, down her neck, then back to her lips again. "I want to fuck you," he said, "and as sure as I'm going to hell I don't want you to die again."

She considered this for another half-second and said, in a moment of brilliant abandon, "Done."

"You're serious."

"I'm the one with an entire suite to myself," she said. "You coming or not?"


	12. Chapter 12

Title: Not Yet by Lightning

**Title:** Not Yet by Lightning

**Chapter:** Twelve

**Author:** Jade Sabre

**Notes:** A shorter chapter today, folks, and one of the last things I wrote. This is yet another example of the huge debt I owe/the huge amount of hero-worship I give to "The Smell of Destiny," which might possibly be my favorite NWN 2 fic ever.

We're exactly halfway through at this point! As always, reviews are lovely and greatly appreciated.

**Disclaimer: **I don't own Neverwinter Nights, or any of its sequels or expansions, or any of the characters contained herein, aside from my PC, who was created on a Bioware engine and thus probably therefore partially belongs to them too.

* * *

**12**

Contrary to popular belief, Sand was not stupid.

Oh, they all _professed_ to believe in his intelligence, especially when there was a question of minute detail that needed resolving. Oh _Sand_, Khelgar and I have a bet going, how many days can an orc go without eating? Hey you, elf, is this potion going to poison me? _Sand_, is it all right if you combine slaadi tongues and fire beetle bellies? The questions were endless, but when it came to matters of importance, no one ever wanted to listen to him.

That was all right, for the most part; his job was to keep Nevalle informed of Laura's movements, not to have his genius recognized by her infuriating companions. Sorceress-sitting was a pain, but the girl was too great a danger to herself and others for him to leave her alone for prolonged periods of time. And since Laura didn't like her, and she didn't have anywhere else to go, he usually stayed at the Keep, doing his research and trying to weigh the costs and benefits of putting Qara under a permanent sleep spell. He always made sure that his opinion was heard—after all, _someone_ had to give the Captain decent advice—but he left most of the petty bickering to the others. The more they spoke, the more information he gathered; the less he spoke, the less they remembered that he was ostensibly spying on them.

Oh, and the details he espied. He could hardly be spared to remember them all, having research and books and troop movements to memorize, but he savored the best ones—Neeshka's penchant for stealing Casavir's pants, an escapade which he overheard her drunkenly bragging to Khelgar; Elanee's attempts at writing love poetry for one of the Greycloak elves—for moments when their idiocies grew especially vexing. They would yell at each other, and at him, and he would sit back and think, _oh, ranger, if you only knew how much I know_…

Oh, he knew about Bishop. He had done a bit of research and come to his own conclusions about the man's origins—he didn't know the whole story, but one hardly had to when it came to these sorts of affairs. One would-be assassin is very much like another, and Sand hadn't spent years in Luskan with his head under a rock. (Well. Technically speaking, it had been under a rock—underground, in the lowest levels of the Towers—but that was clearly beside the point.) He didn't share his knowledge with anyone, of course, mainly because he knew his limitations and knew that the ranger, while no match for his magic, could simply sneak up behind him and slit his throat at that would be the end of it. And really, that wasn't much of an end at all. He was well aware of the fact that he might die on this quest, but he preferred to think it would be in a blaze of glory.

But he wanted to tell Laura.

The girl had been coming to him almost since he first joined their team and casually but clinically mentioned that he had a potion that would almost eliminate the monthly rounds of cramps and bleeding that afflicted human females. He did it as much for her as for himself—the smell of menstruation in close quarters was enough to clog his nose for days, and he found the sharp, bitter scent of iron distasteful. She almost cracked a smile when he told her it was also a contraceptive, as if laughing at the idea, and she and Shandra both made use of the potion on an irregular basis, generally waiting until the last minute before asking him for a new dose.

After Shandra's death, Laura became much more forgetful, to the point where Sand found himself reminding her during the first few months. He supposed the lack of companionship was what distracted her, filing it away as an example of her reactions to the events around her—after all, it wouldn't do to have her suddenly snap without warning, although she made it so very difficult to read the potential signs. Neeshka's heritage seemed to alter the normal cycles, while Elanee's cycle was, as it was with all elves, much longer. So he wasn't entirely surprised that Laura, with little reason to remember, forgot.

Then she started coming with a regularity that didn't surprise him either—she was, when she put her mind to it, a very orderly sort of girl. He attributed it to a reorganization of priorities—a reorganization of her life, brought on in a subtle but definite way since defeating the first Shadow Reaver. The other signs were there—she spent more time in the chapel than she had ever spent since the place was first built, and she was freer with her words, as if realizing that the others needed a sign that she was there, and there for them. He applauded this newfound sense of leadership in his reports, and thought that was that.

So when he first noticed the new scent, the one that clung to her skin underneath layers of soap and scrubbing, he thought that his nose had perhaps failed him for the first time in his life. His second thought was _no, that's ridiculous, what you're smelling is obviously what's there, silly to blame a human's stupidity on your perfectly functioning nose._ But the salty-sweet musk that wrapped itself around her like her lover's arms was so entirely unexpected that Sand, for once, had no pithy comment to make, no witty remark to expose her to embarrassment. And _oh_, she would have been embarrassed. He generally tried to spare her such indignities, but when _Bishop_ was the one who matched her scent (much more powerfully, as if he didn't care if it lingered, strong and tangy against the muted softness of her scalded skin), well, the girl deserved whatever she got.

But no remark came, and when he watched her, she behaved exactly the same as she always had. There was no new partiality, no misguided attempts to defend his reprehensible actions—in short, there was a complete lack of the loverly tenderness he expected to find in a girl flushed with her first affair. She behaved most practically, and Sand found himself admiring her all the more for it. And really, who was he to question where she took her pleasure?

Still, he felt obligated to—tell her, or warn her, or remind her that he was, in fact, watching, and that he was not, contrary to popular opinion, stupid. So the next time she came for the potion—they were alone, in the library—he handed it to her and said, "I trust you, you know."

She took the potion from him, her face as unreadable as always. Sand had spent many years among humans, but there were still nuances of expression that escaped him, and with someone as skilled as the Knight Captain, he really had no choice but to accept what little he saw. Her scent had the same whetstone tang as Nevalle's, growing stronger by the day, mixed with the metal of long-simmering anger, the cloy of her nighttime activities, and underneath it all, a whiff of the feminine, a clean aroma that added curves, softening all the others. "Thank you," she said, to his words or the potion, he wasn't sure.

"You've made good decisions so far, aside from taking on that idiot girl—" who was nowhere in sight, and hadn't been for half an hour, which meant he probably should go looking for her "—and I trust that in the future you will continue to do so."

"Mm-hm." He didn't have to be able to read her face or catch the whiff of confusion to know she was perplexed by his sudden verbosity—normally she came, took the potion, and left the beaker behind for reuse—and so he watched her face carefully as she drank.

"And I trust you will stay clear-headed, and not allow any—attachments—to cloud your vision."

She hesitated, for the briefest moment in which the air was flooded with—not-quite-guilt—cloying sweetness mixed with the edged smell of resignation, confirming all his suspicions, and then she finished gulping down the potion. "Of course," she said neutrally. "I do my best."

"That's all we can ask for, dear girl," he said, plucking the flask from her uncertain grip.


	13. Chapter 13

**Title:** Not Yet by Lightning

**Chapter**: Thirteen

**Author:** Jade Sabre

**Notes:** Mmmm…this chapter earned me one of my favorite beta quotes EVER. It also does its part to help the fic earn that M rating up there. And not just because Bishop wallows in profanity. Just so you know.

Reviews are, of course, incredibly welcome at this point, especially as I'm still a bit tenuous on this M-rating ground.

**Disclaimer: **I don't own Neverwinter Nights, or any of its sequels or expansions, or any of the characters contained herein, aside from my PC, who was created on a Bioware engine and thus probably therefore partially belongs to them too.

* * *

**13**

He was beginning to think he had made a mistake.

At first glance, this seemed like a remarkably stupid thing to think. He had not only seduced the Knight Captain of Crossroad Keep—something no one else had ever done—but had also managed to _stay _in her bed. She was a pretty thing, so the complaint wasn't on that end, and while he couldn't exactly go around bragging about it, he could enjoy his own private amusement when the paladin attempted to put him in his place. His nights in the keep were warm and satisfying, and his nights on the road were still pretty much his to control.

No, he really shouldn't have had any complaints about the entire situation, aside from the part where he was trapped inside a stone keep and doing nothing but fetch-and-carries while he waited for the world to end. Yet something was nagging him about the whole thing, something whispering in his ear that he shouldn't get too comfortable because he was starting to forget about The Plan.

(Not that he was really one for plans or anything. He had some ideas, made a few preparations, occasionally followed through. It was entirely up to him what he did, no matter what anyone else was counting on.)

For one thing, she was young. He hadn't realized that, at first, when he'd watched her walk into the Sunken Flagon with her pragmatic inability to deal with the stupidity of others. Watching her for months afterwards, he'd had an idea that her stoicism made her seem older than her years, but she so rarely wavered—and even then, it was usually when she thought she was alone (and after she had checked and double-checked that fact; it was hard to hide from her)—that he thought only someone of a certain age could be so ingrained in her ways. Even Shandra, for all her whining about how tough she had to be because she grew up on a farm, relaxed every once and a while. The Captain displayed none of this whining despite her similar upbringing and yet, in some ways, was the paladin's equal in sheer reservation. So he'd figured she was around Shandra's age, if not close to his own.

But while she could be ageless and mature and aloof when dealing with others, there were some facts that were hard to hide in bed. Her body—or what he knew of it through touch, since he never really got a chance to look—_felt_ young beneath his fingertips, and surprisingly lacking in the little wears and tears that older adventurers showed. Her inexperience—well, it _was _difficult to get through her defenses, and as far as he knew he might be the only man who bothered trying (and even then he wasn't sure how he had succeeded), but that didn't exactly bode well either. And her reactions—he was used to practiced, faked full-throated moans, but she gave him unpracticed half-stifled gasps that stirred his blood with their naïvété and astounded him with their honesty.

But it wasn't really her age that bothered him, aside from the dangers of infatuation. Or maybe it was—he was afraid she'd show signs of infatuation, but instead she treated him exactly the same as she had before. He was beginning to forget what he had wanted out of this in the first place—to get laid? Because that wasn't happening like it should've—and on top of it, he couldn't crack her austerity, and that frustrated him. She made absolutely no move to restrict his behavior, aside from occasionally telling him to leave the others alone. She watched him, perhaps a little more closely than before, and with a different look in her eye, but she kept just as close an eye on Jerro. She didn't exactly appear to trust him any more than she had before this had started. He wasn't making any progress in becoming her confidant—and yet he knew with an absolute certainty that she wasn't just using him as some kind of release for her own benefit, and that almost scared him.

It was that she let him do whatever he wanted—and he did, as far as he thought she knew what to do. What she really needed, he thought, was a teacher, someone to show her all the kinky ins and outs of sex. And he wasn't used to teaching, or particularly wanted to teach—he was used to women knowing exactly what they were supposed to do. And he wasn't sure she wanted to learn—he didn't know _what _she wanted. He had wanted her, and now he had her, and it was slowly becoming apparent that having her involved _her_, a separate person with needs and appetites of her own.And he didn't want her getting ideas if he started treating her differently than he had before. And—and—he couldn't talk to her, because that might give her ideas too. She didn't need to get any ideas, but he didn't know how to get any of his own without giving her some reason to think—what? And trying to answer _that _question wasn't even worth his time.

**o-o-o**

**o-o-o**

She'd sent him out with a patrol of Greycloak archers, a short round of the surrounding farms, so he could tell her whether or not they would be able to hit anything if something actually attacked them. It was a thankless, _boring _job, and no amount of Greycloak baiting was going to erase that fact. To top it all off, they'd run into a group of bandits that had been as surprised to see Greycloaks as the recruits were to see bandits, and the sergeant in charge of the patrol had accepted their surrender.

"The Knight Captain would want to see justice served," the sergeant said, admirably hiding the fact that he must've been quaking in his boots to go up against the Knight Captain's personal maniac.

He snorted and said, "You must've figured out by now that the lady doesn't exactly go for all that Tyrran tripe—"

"Still," he said, "they haven't done anything wrong that we can see. Better to take them back before they do any harm—"

"Or, we could just kill them all, and then we'd know for sure they wouldn't be able to do any harm."

The sergeant drew a breath and said, "No."

Bishop sighed and said, "Whatever."

The whole affair meant that the patrol took longer _and _that he had to stick around and watch the bandits be put in the dungeon. Dinner was cold by the time the patrol got to it, and then to eat it he had to endure the excited yapping of a bunch of recruits who could, _maybe_ hit a target one time out of three, one and a half if you weren't looking to kill. This wasn't exactly thrilling news, and he was sorely tempted to skip reporting it and just spend the night outside the walls with Karnwyr for warmth.

But he was a mortal man of flesh, and the flesh was weak. So he shoved his half-eaten dinner away, unable to listen to the prattling for another second, and stalked out into the dark halls of the Keep. It was fairly easy to sneak through—the halls were wide and full of shadows for the taking—and the living quarters tended to be fairly deserted after nightfall, the occupants having already made the decision to stay in and sleep or stay out until dawn.

He opened the door without bothering to knock and immediately shrugged out of his armor. Laura sat at her desk, a light spell cast on her candle (a tricky way of avoiding counting the hours of the night one spent working), attention on the stack of paperwork before her. She didn't look up, despite the fact that he made as much noise as possible dumping his belongings on her floor (though he did relent and straighten everything up; he had enough control to ensure that his temper didn't result in his effects being spoiled). He was down to the light tunic and trousers he wore to keep the leather from chafing, and she _still_ hadn't stopped reading.

"I sincerely hope that's interesting," he said, not bothering to hide his displeasure with the world.

"It's the report from your patrol," she said. "Can they shoot?"

"Sometimes. If you give them twenty minutes to aim and another ten to gather up the courage to shoot. And if you don't distract them in that time."

She picked up a quill from the desk and made a note. He stared at the back of her head, but she gave no sign that it disturbed her.

"Well. When you're _finished_," he said.

The quill paused, and then resumed its course.

Oh, she had _no _idea the disaster she courted. He was hardly some lapdog who would wait on her hand and foot. He stared at the back of her head, her hair pinned up in its usual twist, trying to come up with something suitable to express how much he hated being sent on patrol, how much he hated letting himself being sent on patrols, how much he—

She set down the quill and twisted in her chair to look up at him. After a moment she said, "I thought you'd be bored, sitting around here."

"At least I'd be able to decide what to do, instead of having some kid tell me how to handle bandits."

She shrugged. "There's not much else to do right now," she said. "That's all there is to it. We can't really do anything until we have another shard, according to Zhjaeve—"

"Whatever." He didn't really care. At this point he was starting to think he'd made a mistake coming here—she wasn't going to put up with what she saw as his crap anymore than she put up with anyone else's. It was clear from the way she was still fully dressed in her knight's overcoat, the way she hadn't moved the paper away from her desk, the way she was still sitting at her desk, instead of actually turning and talking to him—hell, the way she kept herself so pinned up and formal_ all the damn time_.

She twisted back in her chair with another shrug, leaving him to stare at the back of her head again, fingers twitching under his crossed arms. Abruptly he moved forward and, without really thinking about it, pulled out one of the decorated sticks she pinned into her hair. He turned it over in his hands—white, with trios of lightning bolts painted in circles around it—ignoring her startled reaction, and then pulled out the other one.

Her hair stayed up. Hissing with annoyance, he reached down to find and pluck out what was keeping it up, but her hand caught his as she turned in her seat again and said, "What are you doing?"

"What do you think I'm doing?" he demanded, freeing his hand from her grasp and digging his fingers into her coif.

"_Stop_," she said, trying to pull away, but with a jerk he tugged her hair out of its careful arrangement, the pins making a ticking noise as they fell to the floor.

She was out of her chair and five feet away from him in the next second, but the damage had been done. Her hair tumbled down over her shoulder, barely falling out of its twist, hitting her just at the swell of her breast. He knew from experience that it was thick and soft, but something about seeing it down around her face, following the curve of her jaw as she instinctively gathered it into her hands, was infinitely satisfying. She looked young and almost vulnerable, and though her expression had barely flickered, her eyes were warier than they had been.

"What was that for?" she asked, shaking her head once to loosen it, already moving to put it back up.

He closed the distance between them in two steps and pried her hands away from her hair. He grasped her wrists in one hand and took a lock between his fingers, considering it, watching the play of the light over the different shades before letting it dangle in her face. It fell along her nose, only increasing her youth.

"No reason," he said, not loosening his grip on her, staring down into her face.

She sighed and said, "Then could—"

He kissed her, because he was sick of listening to her talk, but while she let herself be kissed, she made no moves to reciprocate the gesture. He pulled away and rested his forehead against hers, bringing their noses to bump against each other, turning her eyes into one dark blur in front of his. After a moment, he released her hands, which fell to her sides uncertainly, as if she couldn't decide if she wanted to push him away or not.

"Are you quite finished?" she said tiredly, at the same time he said, "Are you done?" There was a longer pause, in which neither moved. Their breath came and went in the same space; he could almost feel her pulse moving through her skin.

"Well," he said, still leaning against her, "if that's—"

"I have things I have to do," she said. "I didn't anything done today because Sand and Aldanon and Qara—"

He kissed her again, shifting to press her into the wall. She reluctantly gave under the pressure, and he immediately broke it off to say, "If that's what you did all day, you don't need to do anything else."

"But I—"

Shut _up_, he thought, kissing her, harder this time, running his hands into her hair, thick and tangled between his fingers. Her hands came up to rest against his chest—again as if she couldn't decide to push him away or not—and he could feel every inch of her ready to flee at the first opening.

Well. He wasn't going to offer her the opportunity. She'd stretched him to the limits today, and now it was her turn to give something; she wasn't going to get rid of him that easily. He wanted—_something_—and he intended to get it.

"Will you just _relax_?" he demanded, kissing her jaw, moving his kisses to her neck, massaging the back of her head. That was the real problem, he thought, the part of him that should have been occupied by what she was doing to him, except she wasn't doing her job. She was reserved and tense and even when she literally let her hair down she didn't want to give him a glimpse of _anything_—he would've been satisfied with—gods, he didn't even know anymore. He wanted this girl—he wanted her, he'd taken her, and he should have had her, but she didn't seem to want to be _there_ for the having.

She squirmed and said, in a jerky voice, "I'm not—"

"Fuck that," he said, to whatever it was she was going to say, and also to the fact that her tunic was covering her shoulders. He pushed her overcoat down her arms—she let it drop to the ground—and reached down and tugged the hem upwards; she seemed to give in to the inevitable and lifted her arms, letting him slip it over her head. She moved to kiss him, but he ignored her. It was too late for her to distract him from what _he _wanted; to that end, he pulled up the undershirt she wore and tossed that on the floor as well, leaving only her breast bindings. Her shoulders hunched as she tensed again, even as she shook her head to settle her hair, not seeming to realize how incredibly sexy the motion was and how unlikely it was that he was going to be _able _to leave her alone after watching it.

"Relax," he said, in what he hoped was a calmer tone, pressing her back into the wall as he pressed kisses to her collarbone, feeling her fighting her natural response.

"Can we, um," she said, one arm waving in the general direction of the bed, but he ignored that too, pulling her away from the wall just long enough to slip his arms around her, pressing his hands into her shoulder blades while he went on kissing her shoulders, her collarbones, her neck.

He followed her jaw up to her ear, paused a moment, and whispered, "No."

"Um," was her almost-terrified response as he unclasped her breast bindings. He kissed her, slowly, giving her something to distract her from whatever it was that was bothering her, and she kissed him as though trying to distract him from what he was doing.

To his everlasting frustration, she had somehow contrived to have yet _another_ piece of fabric covering her. He pulled away and stared at the strip of cloth wound around her midsection. "What the _hell_," he said, not bothering to hide his impatience, "is that?"

She bit her red, swollen lip and he gave into temptation and kissed it, because it was thick and pouting and warm. "Scar," she said finally.

He rolled his eyes, already tugging at the bandage. "I already know it's there. Everyone knows it's there. Hell, people on other _planes _know it's there by now—"

"Yes, but—"

It pulled off, and he was left staring at the rather large, jagged mark on her chest. He knew it by touch, but he'd never bothered to do anything like map her body in his mind and hadn't realized that it went from halfway down her sternum to just above her navel, its edges ragged and a strange silvery color.

"Huh," he said, reaching out and running a finger down it. She shivered. "This must've been your entire torso when you were a kid." He looked up and met her eyes. She had an almost panicked edge to her expression now, though what she was afraid of he couldn't imagine. He knew she had a big gaping scar on her chest; he'd known that almost as long as they'd been on speaking terms. He had still wanted her, he still _did_ want her, he'd slept with her enough times to be familiar with its slick texture, and he was starting to reach a point tonight where he would have fucked her even if the scar had been across her face, instead.

"Yes," she said, eyes on his face, still tense.

"Oh fucking _gods_, Farthing," he said, "will you just _let go_?"

She was still watching his face and so her surprise when he reached out and grasped her breasts was absolute(ly gratifying). She gasped and he kissed her parted lips, running his hands up and down her scarred torso (like he _cared_, like he didn't have scars too). An idea was forming in his mind, a plan, and he suddenly decided he was going to follow through with it.

She made a noise of confusion as he suddenly dropped down to his knees, and then his hands had pulled her pants down from her waist and his mouth was on the inside of her thigh and his fingers were warm and wet inside her. A shudder ran through her as her arms flailed, but he let his tongue join his fingers and _felt _her melt, the tension bleeding out of her. She grasped his hair so tightly she was liable to pull it out, but he persisted until she came with a moaning sigh that crashed around his ears.

He pulled away and stood, licking his fingers with a kind of lazy insolence even though he himself was harder than he'd been in months. She slid down the wall, her legs trembling and shaky, her mouth parted as her breath came in little _oh oh oh_ sounds that _really_ weren't helping his condition. They stared at each other for a moment, and then he picked her up, tugging her pants off from where they had pooled near her feet, and unceremoniously moved and dumped her in the bed.

She lay there, her breathing still shaky and surprised, and he sat down with his back to her and waited, pushed to the very limits of his self-control and rapidly losing ground. Then he felt her hand on his arm, tugging him over, and he turned his head and she was there, kissing him, warm and sweet and salty all at once, her kisses proof that she was a good learner even if he wasn't the greatest teacher. She pulled away and he reached to pull her back, but she dropped her head into the crook of his neck and shoulder. He twisted in order to pull her flush against him, and then she lifted her head and laughed.

He stared at her, torn between shock and his insatiable need to fuck her, _now_, and she met his frankly bewildered gaze and laughed again, delighted and free, tossing her head and not even protesting when he cut off her laugh with a sloppy kiss. He could still feel her laughter shaking through his skin as he followed her down and her arms went around his back and she clung to him, laughing breathlessly all the way.


	14. Chapter 14

Title: Not Yet by Lightning

**Title:** Not Yet by Lightning

**Chapter:** Fourteen

**Author:** Jade Sabre

**Notes:** This is the second chapter I ever wrote, and it still feels that way to me, but short of rewriting it entirely (which, frankly, is not my forte), I've just tweaked it until it feels a little better to me. Still, if it feels a little funny, that's why.

In other news, I'm actually about to beat NWN 2 for the first time ever. Yay!

**Disclaimer: **I don't own Neverwinter Nights, or any of its sequels or expansions, or any of the characters contained herein, aside from my PC, who was created on a Bioware engine and thus probably therefore partially belongs to them too.

* * *

**14**

They fucked whenever they got the chance. She couldn't come up with a better word for it; "fucked" was the only way to describe a pair of people dancing a dance of emotional noncommitment while having sex whenever they could steal an hour to themselves, the only word for the breathless yet oddly…"passionless" wasn't the word, but…well, it wasn't like anything she had ever thought about, when she had thought about it. The lack of time probably had something to do with it—they could hardly hope to conduct a clandestine affair by the fire circle while they traveled, and it seemed that traveling was all they were doing. Still, whenever they returned to the Keep, she always managed to wrestle a few days for everyone to "relax and recharge," which meant she spent most of her time cooped up in meetings or talking to disgruntled farmers, and then skipped dinner in favor of racing to her room and finding him waiting.

And then they would fuck, and it wasn't some kind of slow, passionate sex, but it wasn't like he was the only one enjoying it either. She couldn't say she wasn't satisfied (not that she would, even if she wasn't, because that would be admitting that she cared about what she got out of this), even though it was pretty much the same every time. Some nights she'd be so tired she'd have time to fall into bed once and then pass out, and he'd cross his arms behind his head and stare at the ceiling while she fell asleep curled on her side facing the wall; and other nights it was like she couldn't hold him tight enough, like he couldn't _stop _fucking her, like she couldn't let him stop, on and on until they fell asleep from exhaustion. And always, always, she would wake up alone.

He wasn't a cuddler. She had figured that out early on, unsure of the etiquette in a _normal_ situation and far too…confused to attempt anything personal. So when he rolled away she didn't follow, and he didn't extend an offer, and so she'd lain in bed with the covers pulled up under her arms, trying to figure out exactly how deep the was shit she was in. Because she was totally fucked, in so many different ways, if anyone figured out what was up (not that it would be hard if they looked close enough), if she started examining why either of them had decided this was a good idea, if she started thinking she could affect him in any way, if she started _feeling_—

But there were no feelings involved. That much was obvious. Besides, it didn't do to play favorites. She let him fuck her and he did fuck her and they both came away feeling thoroughly well-fucked, and it didn't seem like anything else should matter.

But it did, and that was why sometimes, when they were both awake but taking a break, and the candlelight was still bright and she was coming out of the post-coital lethargy and he was staring implacably at the ceiling, she would turn on her side and prop up her head and talk to him.

**o-o-o**

**o-o-o**

"Yeah?" he asked, as she rolled over and rested her head on the pillow under his arm.

"Hm," she said, sighing, breathing in the scent of pines and dirt and sweat and sex that clung to him.

It was quiet, except for their breathing, and it was nice to notice that he did normal things like breathe, and his heart beat in his chest (which sometimes was more than he could say for her). Then she said, "…where you'd be, if you weren't here."

"That would be telling," he said.

"You'd be getting drunk at the Phoenix," she said.

"Not necessarily."

"I'm the only available woman for miles around. Neeshka does not, as far I as I can tell, have a libido, one day Elanee is going to break under your mocking comments and castrate you, and Kana…"

"…would just as soon have castrated me the first second she saw me. Care to talk about something other than the loss of my manhood which would also, I should say, result in me not being here?"

"I sleep better when you're not here," she said, not quite teasing, not quite truthful.

"Can't imagine why that would be."

She felt this would be an appropriate moment to rest her hand, lightly, on his chest; she knew he tilted his head to be able to look at her, but she concentrated her gaze on her hand, brushing her fingertips over his skin. "Though I suppose you could have your pick of any of the peasant girls hanging around here—I doubt any of them would be fast enough to escape you." She waited the space of his breath (only slightly slower than normal) and said, "I'm a peasant girl, so if you have anything disparaging to say…"

She was leading him on, and she knew it and she knew he knew it and she hated it, but even Laura, the quiet (peaceful calm in-control mediating powerful gentle subtle and a hundred more words she never thought she would hear) knight captain had the human weakness of wanting a sense of the person she pressed herself against in complete vulnerability. She couldn't help it, and it was maddening that she couldn't help it, and it was worse because of all the men she knew, it was the one who hated talking. He was still beneath her fingertips, and she knew he was mulling over an answer in his mind, or whether or not to bother answering, and she waited, afraid of babbling, wise enough to know what not to do but young enough to do it anyway if she wasn't careful.

Finally he said, "Rape is…a bother."

It wasn't his normal cold drawl, though it was certainly a drawl, more of a drawling rumble of a murmur, the sort of quiet, tired response that made her think maybe, just maybe, he was being honest. He was almost always truthful, but he wasn't completely _honest_, yet when he was tired and well-pleased he sometimes didn't seem to see any harm in talking, and these were the moments she pounced. She waited, still tracing circles on his chest with her fingers, nails barely brushing the skin, tickling the light hair that curled over it.

"I mean, what do you get when you rape someone?" he said, staring at the ceiling again. "A whole lot of pissed-off people, and the law, and her brother or uncle or cousin or the boy down the street who's too scared to talk to her coming after your blood, and it's just not worth the trouble. Whores may cost money, but in the long run it's cheaper than dying, and worth being able to show your face in town when you have to."

"So it's the principle of the thing, really."

"Hm?"

"Randomly bedding a girl against her will is free but has more repercussions than a night spent with a whore." A very, very tiny part of Laura couldn't believe she was having this conversation, the same part that liked making daisy chains and was horrified that she had let _this_ man be the first one (though if he had noticed that, which he almost certainly had, he had curiously never mentioned it). It was the part that wondered what Daeghun would think to know she was lying naked in a bed with a man who may or may not have actually raped someone in order to come by the knowledge he was espousing. "So where does seducing your leader come in?"

"It's free."

"I should start charging you. Or just take it out of your cut."

"What cut?" There was a hint of actual interest in his voice, now, not just the lazy humoring of before. He was coming out of his stupor, then, or else he really wanted his cut. She suspected—hoped?—no, suspected the latter. "I'm pretty sure my last cut disappeared the same time Veedle was building that tower for that ridiculous planewalker of yours."

"He's not mine," she said. "I don't own anyone."

"No?" He looked down at her again.

"No," she said. "I can't help the fact that they want to be here, that they think—I give orders because they expect me—they want something to do, and so I give it to them. I don't own anyone."

"So if they didn't follow your orders…"

"Well, I'd wonder why they bothered being around in the first place, knowing that I had been placed in charge…but I can't—slavish devotion isn't…" She trailed off, afraid of saying too much, because they second they started discussing their _feelings_ was the second he bailed—or he won their battle of wills. She wasn't sure which scenario frightened her more. "But if you can pay a whore, I think you can pay me part of your cut. I bathe and this bed is much nicer than any whore's bed."

"Oh, that's definitely true." He cast his eye about the room, and she heard the disquiet in his voice, barely disguised, as he said, "Your lovely big bed in your lovely big castle, all stone and walls keeping you safe and warm…"

She looked up at his face and saw in the downturn of his mouth the same emotions she heard in his voice, and her stomach—her gut—clenched painfully inside her because she knew, she _knew_, that he wouldn't stay, and there was no way to make him stay. And she couldn't say why she wanted him to stay, except that when he fucked her it was the most breathlessly exhilarating feeling she knew and when he laughed with her instead of at her she—

She focused back on his chest, on the solidity of him, on all the things she liked about having a warm body in her bed and none of the things she wasn't sure about, and it stayed that way for a long time until _he_ broke the silence and said, "What?"

"Hm?"

"Are you thinking?"

"Yes," she said, and the half-formed thoughts pressing to complete themselves in her mind renewed their attack, and her fingers convulsively curled on his chest.

"Well now," he said, turning, one arm coming down to run a hand through her hair, "we can't have that."

"Oh, I don't know," she said, tilting her head up, calm again, flirting.

"Thinking's dangerous," he told her, shifting again as she acquiesced and pressed herself down into the bed, his body coming over hers.

"Then make me stop," she said, looking up but unable to meet his eyes, afraid he would see that somewhere inside she was begging.

He chuckled, a low, dangerous sound that vibrated against her skin as he kissed her neck. She closed her eyes and put her arms around him and dug her fingers into his back and pushed all her worries aside in favor of the feel of his skin sliding against hers.


	15. Chapter 15

**Title:** Not Yet by Lightning

**Chapter:** Fifteen

**Author:** Jade Sabre

**Notes:** I cannot write this Casavir. I read everyone else's Casavirs and think "oh, wow, this is so good!" And then I try to write Casavir—canon Casavir, as adapted to these circumstances—and I have the worst time trying to do it. I have one more chapter that I'd like to write, because I think it would round out this subplot, and yet getting into Casavir's head is so very difficult…

Anyway, y'all aren't here to hear me complain. I'm mostly satisfied with this chapter, even though I relied on the in-game dialogue probably a little more than I should have. Also, I love Sand to death. But y'all knew that already.

Reviews, as always, would be AWESOME.

**Disclaimer: **I don't own Neverwinter Nights, or any of its sequels or expansions, or any of the characters contained herein, aside from my PC, who was created on a Bioware engine and thus probably therefore partially belongs to them too.

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**15**

Sand was taking a break from potions and sorceress-sitting and enjoying himself at the pub. There were potions brewing overnight in his workroom, and Qara was safely with the other companions, sulking amidst their light and laughter. Enjoying himself, of course, meant sitting at a side table with a pint of the best ale available (and not too shabby at that, considering the innkeeper's humble origins) and roundly defeating Sir Nevalle at chess.

"Check," he said lazily, setting down his knight and enjoying the irony as Nevalle's brow furrowed in frustration.

Nevalle's hand hovered over the pieces, and finally he gave in and took the most obvious move, sliding his king a space to the right. He wasn't a bad chess player by any means, otherwise Sand would have stopped playing him years ago; while the wizard preferred a more subtle infiltration strategy, the knight tended for a mixture of subterfuge and brute force, which always made for an interesting game.

In the case, however, he was sadly mistaken if he thought he would come away with a victory. Sand moved his bishop three spaces and sat back in his chair, smirking. "And mate."

"I know," Nevalle said, resting his chin on his hand as he studied the board.

"Oh, no need to be grouchy," he said. "Best two out of three?"

Nevalle sighed and rubbed his face. "I wish. I have to meet with the Knight Captain again before I return to Neverwinter. I think," he said in a conversational tone, "she's been avoiding me."

"No doubt about it," Sand said. "I don't think she likes you very much." Nevalle looked at him. "And who can blame her, really?"

"It's my lord she doesn't like," he said. "But I should be able to persuade him to send more money after this report. The Keep is rebuilding just as he hoped."

"Oh, yes, be sure to tell her that. I'm sure she'll fall at your knees from sheer excitement."

Nevalle narrowed his eyes, the closest he ever came to a dirty look. "I thought she was too young for me?"

Sand glanced at the Knight Captain, sitting at the next table with Khelgar and a few others, patiently enduring Casavir's steady attentions. "Our dear paladin doesn't seem to share your opinion."

"Casavir—"

"Better you than him, in my opinion." _Better you than what she's chosen, gods help us all_.

Nevalle couldn't stop a snort of laughter, barely covering it up with a cough. "I'm sure the lady can form her own opinions and has little need of your advice."

Sand felt his lips curl and tried to turn it into a smile. "That's what _she _thinks. Everyone would benefit if they received my advice."

"Right," Nevalle said dryly, taking one last look at the chessboard. He finished off his own pint of ale and stood. "Until next time. Weekly reports, wizard."

"As you wish," Sand said, sketching a wave and watching the knight go. Nevalle approached his Knight Captain and said a few words to her, words Sand could have understood if he had put his mind to it, but her displeasure was strong enough to reach her face (and Sand's nose) before she masked it and departed with him. The conversation dwindled as they left, only to explode with curiosity once she was safely gone.

"I hope it's nothing serious," Elanee said.

"I hope it involves burning this place to the ground."

"No one _asked_ what you thought," Sand said, though Qara wasn't listening.

"I'm sure it is nothing serious," Casavir said to Elanee.

"What d'you think he wants?" Neeshka said.

"The same thing every man wants," Grobnar said. The others stopped and stared at him; he said slowly, as if this were an obvious truth, "Her advice on how to make a daisy chain."

Bishop's low laugh floated—no, crawled—over from the bar, where he stood as always, not quite a part of the proceedings but not entirely detached, either. "That's what the man wants, all right."

"Oh, indeed!" Grobnar said. "I understand that our Knight Captain is quite the expert on daisy-chain-weaving—"

"Sure she is," Bishop said, leaning with his back against the bar, his tankard dangling from one hand. "I'm sure she's _very_ good."

"Bishop," Elanee said, trying to play the mother—whose mother, Sand could never quite guess.

"Oh, fine," he said. "I'll just be a good boy and go, then."

He set his tankard down on the bar and was clearly about to leave—and he always left early, and Sand was quite sure he was the only other person who knew why—when Casavir suddenly stood and said, "No."

Oh, my. Sand settled back in his chair and took another swig of ale, watching with narrowed eyes, calculating the conversation's potential directions, the moves each man would need to make if he wanted to secure any kind of victory over his opponent.

Bishop seemed to be just as amused, from the way he stopped with his back to them and said, "No?"

"I would speak with you, first," Casavir said, his face set, his lower jaw almost jutting out with determination.

He turned around, mocking sneer firmly in place. "And what's got you so troubled up to your halo that you want to talk to _me_?" Elanee opened her mouth to speak, but Bishop went on before she could say a word. "Jealousy, maybe?"

"It has nothing to do with her," Casavir said, almost too quickly. Sand wondered if there was a special circle in the Hells reserved for lying paladins.

"Uh-huh." Bishop crossed his arms. "What else could you possibly—"

"I do not trust you, Bishop—"

"Oh, _that's _a surprise," Neeshka muttered.

"—and neither should she."

Bishop looked as nonplussed as Neeshka. "Sounds like good advice to me. In fact," and he let the introduction linger for a moment, "I told her the same thing about you."

That rocked the paladin back on his feet. "What?"

"You can distrust me all you want," Bishop said, spreading his hands wide. "You probably should distrust me all you want—but I'm a sight more honest with myself than you. You," and he drawled, but there was a hint of anger in his voice, too, "a paladin who can't even figure out how he feels about a woman."

"I follow my leader wherever she goes. My blade is hers. There is nothing more." He sounded as if he was reciting a mantra; Sand wondered if it helped him sleep at night.

"See, but you're damn useless on the battlefield," Bishop said, his grin turning decidedly malicious. "Trying to release all your frustration in battle only makes you sloppy. There's only one cure for that, but you're so busy in your quest to forget you're a man that you forget something very important."

"And what," Casavir said, his face losing its determination, drawing into tight lines, but his voice quiet, "is that?"

"You forget she's a woman."

Casavir looked downright confused. "She's a girl, a knight—"

"She's a _woman_," and Bishop _caressed_ the word like he would no doubt caress the subject later that night, and for the first time Sand had an inkling of why, perhaps, a woman might find him attractive, "and a woman needs a man—"

"Like a fish needs a wagon train," Grobnar said, though no one paid him any attention.

"—to keep her…satisfied. Happy." He stepped closer to the paladin and cocked his head. "And you want her to be happy, don't you?"

"I—"

"Then you know what to do about it, don't you?" Bishop smirked as if he had been born to it. "Make her happy. Take her like you've taken any of the other whores in your past—"

"Do not speak of her that way!" Casavir thundered, his voice suddenly loud and the air suddenly full of _pain_. Sand straightened in his seat, intrigued. "My lady is not one of your cheap tools for pleasure. Her noble bearing far surpasses anything you've—" He stopped, as if not trusting himself to speak further.

Bishop laughed. "What, defending her honor? She can do it herself, you know." Casavir pressed his lips together, gathering for a new attack, but again Bishop preempted him. "And unlike you, paladin, I know she can. So there's no need to clench your jaw and make a fist. What would you do, hit me? Force me to _apologize_? Don't tell me you think my apologies are worth something."

"There is not a word that comes out of your mouth, Bishop, that is worth anything to anyone," Casavir said, his voice quiet and deadly.

"Then why do you care what I say? It can't be because I'm speaking the truth."

"It's not."

Really, Sand thought to himself, there wouldn't need to be a special circle in hell. This paladin seemed quite capable of creating a hell on earth for himself.

"Uh-huh." Bishop looked him up, and then down, and said, "You better watch your step with all those lies. I would hate to see you trip over your tongue and fall."

The room went utterly still; a muscle in Casavir's cheek twitched as he fought for control. "You speak of what you do not understand, and could never understand," he said, his voice low and quiet. He had the ranger, there, but then he continued, "As for the Knight Captain—"

"Spare me your platitudes, paladin," he drawled. "You've made your point. It's obvious that I'm more honest than you—and yet you tell Farthing to trust _you_, and not trust me. Forgive me," and Sand applauded his burning sarcasm, "if I don't quite follow your logic."

"At least she knows where I align myself."

"So she's got all the facts at her hands. Excellent. Now get out, and let her make her own decisions." He turned and took two steps to the door, then stopped to make his parting remark. "I do."

And he was gone, no doubt straight to the lady's bed, and Casavir, tight-fisted and jaw-clenched and pale, and radiating anger and despair (two suffocating scents), was left in the inn, alone.

Sand pinched the bridge of his nose, trying to clear his head, and released his breath in a humorless chuckle. Check, and mate.


	16. Chapter 16

**Title: **Not Yet by Lightning

**Chapter:** Sixteen

**Author:** Jade Sabre

**Notes:** I luff this chapter. And I luff my readers. And I especially luff my reviewers.

**Disclaimer: **I don't own Neverwinter Nights, or any of its sequels or expansions, or any of the characters contained herein, aside from my PC, who was created on a Bioware engine and thus probably therefore partially belongs to them too.

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**16**

Bishop was on a hunt.

He liked it best this way: stalking his unwitting prey, shunting aside all distractions (which happily included ignoring all the people trying to _talk_ to him—and there weren't many, but some of the Greycloaks hadn't heard his reputation and labored under the impression that, as a companion of the Captain, he was as powerful as but more approachable than their stolid leader. Boys, mostly, and he sneered in their faces, but it still involved talking to them) in favor of the trail of the hunted. Better still when the hunt was in familiar territory, when he knew exactly where he was at any given moment, despite the maze surrounding him.

He started at the point where the prey had last been spotted—in the front hall, speaking with a sergeant—and followed the trail of servants to the dining hall, which was full of people, but not the one he sought. He took the shortcut he always used to reach the bedroom first, but the door was open, the room empty. Circling back, he cornered a terrified-looking greenie and threatened him until he saw a trembling finger pointing outside.

Taking a deep, appreciative scent of the outside air, opening up a new realm of possibilities, he skulked in the fading afternoon shadows, searching for a new lead to point him in the right direction, racking his brain for clues. He looked up at the sky, taking another deep breath, smelling the incense wafting out from the church, the few trees still standing in the courtyard, the smoke from the armory and blacksmith.

Smoke…

He paused, and then headed through the gate to the outer courtyard, climbing the tower's stairs until he stood atop the outer wall. His eyes scanned the skyline until—there. He dropped back down and skulked his way around the wall, dodging the guards posted (laughing at how oblivious they were), until he reached the last corner, where he paused, daring to look around and make sure his prey was still there.

And she was, leaning on her crossed arms, staring out across the southern horizon, completely unruffled by the breeze blowing from the east. Then again, wind never seemed to bother her—she faced even the worst thunderstorm with the same implacable calm she had towards everything else. The damnable tight coil she pinned her hair into prevented it from being "messed up," which was what most women complained about the wind anyway (stupid, really; just cut it off, and then there's no reason to complain). She wore a plain, simple tunic and pants (ever the farmgirl, he thought, though he wasn't sure what he thought about it), and so focused was she on the horizon, she was completely oblivious to his presence.

It would be _so easy_, he thought, staring at her, because she was so indefensible in this moment (not totally—watch for those rings she wears), so easy to rip her a new scar that would never heal, watch the blood spill out of her (as he had countless times before, but never personally), see what little light there was in her dark eyes fade as her knees buckled and she fell to the floor—_so easy_.

But—he didn't really want to. Which was a problem in and of itself, and not one that was solved by rushing in and killing her.

(It would be. It would all be over if he killed her—her life, his reactions to her…_his_ life, and if all this King of Shadows talk was as true as it seemed, potentially the whole world, or at least the world as it was. Which would almost be worth it. Almost. If it weren't for the part where it would be _her_ blood spilling like Shandra's had all those months ago—and what was one faceless farmgirl for another?)

The problem would be solved if he killed her, but he didn't want to. And rather than face that problem, as he had faced thousands of problems throughout his life (usually with the simple solution of killing them all, which worked fine except when he lived when he was supposed to die), he pushed it to the side, and watched her. Always watching.

She was still looking at the horizon when she spoke. "I know you're there."

He didn't answer, because that would confirm her wild guess, but then she turned and looked straight at the shadows where he stood and said, "You might as well come out, whoever you are."

Oh, right. If she was _so_ sure a person was there, she would know who it was. No one else in her party would even be close to sneaking past all her pathetically trained guards. Now his silence was a matter of pride.

There was a beat, and then she resumed her former position. "Or stay there. Whatever suits you."

He stole up behind her, in the steps of her shadow, and whispered in her ear, "_You_ do."

She sighed, her eyes closing, and she said, "I knew it was you."

"Oh, sure you did," he said, leaning with his back against the wall, arms propping him up on either side of his body, looking over at her (always watching).

"Were you looking for me?"

"Just out for a stroll."

She had that partially exasperated, partially apathetic I'll-believe-_that_-when-Cania-melts look on her face, the one that took people off guard because they never knew whether she cared or not. "It's a nice evening," was all she said.

"Depends on your definition of nice."

"Small talk is never easy with you," she observed, carelessly.

"If it didn't involve dancing around any and all subjects that matter, maybe I'd be bothered to be good at it." He was still looking over at her, and she was still looking at the horizon. Unacceptable.

She snorted a little and said, "So _that's_ why you and Casavir don't get along."

He waited, and she finally elaborated with, "Whenever I ask him how he's doing, he always answers, 'Fine.' Or 'well.' Or 'how are you?' Or 'do _you_ need to rest?' The weather's always nice—though he seems to think it best when it's grey—and he always feels fine."

"Well, that's just paladin-talk for you," he said. "Can't trust 'em to say a straight word to your face about anything. Too busy contemplating how fantastically good they are to consider how the common folk feel."

"And are you common?" she asked, a smile touching the edges of her mouth.

"I'm under no delusions about how fantastically good I am," he said.

The smile grew, exasperated, but there. "Oh yes, the great and wonderful and gentle and kind Bishop, king of benevolence and generosity and feeling…"

He shuddered, and only half-meant it. "I don't understand why you bother having him around all the time. I mean, he can fight, but you've got Khelgar and me to do that. I don't see how his limited combative expertise is good enough to put up with having him underfoot all the time."

"Jealous?" she asked, but she didn't seem to care if he denied it or not (he would, because he knew he had no reason to be jealous, he just _hated_ the paladin). She was looking at the horizon like she couldn't see far enough, her entire expression distant—apathetic to some, perhaps, or calm, but he knew (and didn't want to think why he had bothered to gather such knowledge) she was straining to be somewhere else, focusing her entire will on being somewhere she could never return. And suddenly he _was_ jealous, of anything that could take her attention so completely from him. He couldn't get to her if she wasn't there to be had.

She came back, little by little, a sadness in her voice as she finally said, "I let him stay because…I understand."

"What? That he's—"

"I understand what he needs," she said, "and…I understand that he finds it here."

"And what's that?"

She shrugged, and for a moment he was distracted by how _powerful_ a movement it was. She wasn't a slender wisp of a woman—she was well, solidly built, but curvy too, every inch of her tightened by the life she led (as he knew from experience—an experience he had come to claim, and here he was standing on the southern walls fully clothed talking about the _paladin_ of all people)—and in her shrug there was a careless display of strength from the muscles causing the movement. "What he needs."

"Something to be slave to? Some kind of rule—"

"It's religious."

He looked at her, and for the first time she looked back at him, and the look in her eyes was amused. Well. At least she was back here with him, and not brooding over the bloody remains of her village. Feeling a need to encourage another smile (for no other reason than to…to…draw her into a more compliant mood), he said, "One of those super-mystical cleric things a simple man like me couldn't possibly hope to understand."

"Something like that," she said, her half-smile appearing again.

"Though I have to disagree," he said. "I think even the simplest of men understands revenge."

"He does," she said. "That's why I'm here." He narrowed his eyes at her, and she said, "Not to explain revenge, but—I was a simple girl, too."

"I don't see any difference," he said, but that was mostly a lie. True, she was straightforward enough, but only in her complexity. She wasn't a zealot and yet her devotion to her faith was absolute, and yet she never appeared to _do_ anything with it, aside from heal her companions' wounds and pray every evening as the first stars came out.

"I found Hoar on my own," she said. "I didn't need guidance, because—even the simplest man understands revenge."

He figured from her tone that she was suggesting he understood revenge, and that probably meant she was curious but—no way in _hell_ was she going to drag that out of him (yet—wait for the best moment to spring it on her, when she's vulnerable, whenever that might be), so he said, "So how _did_ you find him? Some farmboy break your heart?"

"No," she said, and she looked to the horizon again.

He found himself wondering, suddenly, about what happened when you crossed a cleric of the god (however minor) of revenge, realizing that his half-formed plans were suddenly dependant on this knowledge. Taking a light tone, he said, "I'd hate to see the boys of West Harbor when you were through with them." He said, "So, did you come up with a specific way to punish old flames? Or did you simply pray and use whatever _power_," he drew the word out, "you 'received' at the time?"

Her gaze steady, and on the skyline, she said, "Old flames?"

He laughed out loud, half in derision, half in real amusement. "Old flames? The boys that followed your pretty little face around, who caught your pretty eye and then wandered at the sight of the next pretty face? You know, the shitheads of the world?"

Her dark eyes flicked to the side, taking in his face as they cut under her long dark lashes, as if she was guessing why he asked—and he wondered if she guessed right, and what she thought about her suspicions, and almost whether or not she was hurt but she saved him from having to throw himself over the wall right then and there by looking away and saying, "What old flames?"

He couldn't help it. He stared at her, twisting his expression to make it mocking, but still surprised. "What do you mean, what old flames?"

After a moment she said, "I would have thought you noticed—"

"Well—you're young," though he suddenly wondered _how_ young, realized he didn't have a frame of reference for her age, not knowing how long ago the last War had been (probably because he'd been shut up in Luskan at the time and they would only have bothered mentioning it if Neverwinter herself was burning—but he wasn't going to start thinking about Luskan right now, he was having a hard enough time keeping a grip on the situation as it was) "and it's not like you had time to give your sweetheart a goodbye when you left home, from the way you put it, but—"

She smiled, but it was heavy, her lips turning up against the sadness in her eyes again. "There was no sweetheart. There…never was, really."

He absorbed this, wondering why his heart appeared to be hammering at twice its normal speed, wondering what the _hell_ she was thinking because she sure as hell wasn't letting him see it, but his own face was so still he knew she couldn't tell what he was thinking either. There had to be other, better ways of approaching this situation—whatever the hell it was—she hadn't said _he_ was a sweetheart but—he nearly vomited at the thought of the word—but—

She turned and stared at him, and he stared right back, intimidating, and yet she was completely unruffled like she always was. After a moment she cocked her head and said, "If I wanted a sweetheart," she said, "I could go to Casavir. Or Khelgar. Or hells, even _Grobnar_. He's sweet enough," she said, as he scowled his disgust.

It was an invitation, he suddenly saw, to ask what she _did_ want, but he didn't want to know. Because knowing what she wanted would involve wanting to give it to her, and he—didn't—no matter _how_ curious he was—he—_didn't_—want to give it to her. Besides, she couldn't give him what _he_ wanted, not without giving away more than she had to offer. He had her bed, and that was enough for the both of them.

The time had passed for him to speak, and she straightened, side-stepping to stand in front of him, leaning forward as he leaned back against the wall, hands coming up to grip her arms and hold her a whisper away from him. "Kiss me," she whispered, her dark eyes filling his vision.

"Your men might see," he said, using every ounce of his control to sound completely calm.

She smirked, her bedroom smirk, the only intentionally erotic thing he'd ever seen her do, and leaned forward and kissed him anyway. He couldn't help kissing her back, still gripping her arms even as her hands cupped against his cheeks and dragged back around his head, pressing herself into him. She pulled away the space of a breath and said, "That was an order."

"Far be it from me to disobey, _Captain_," he drawled, and then she pulling away from him, pulling him with her as she started for the stairs, and he tumbled after her, satisfied (relieved) that he wouldn't have to try to fathom her again for the rest of the night.


	17. Chapter 17

**Title:** Not Yet by Lightning

**Chapter:**

**Author: **Jade Sabre

**Notes:** First of all, sorry about the delay. First there was the Avatar: The Last Airbender finale, and then I went on vacation, and _then _I read _Artemis Fowl: The Time Paradox_, and so my brain has been a little fried, fandom-wise. But now I'm back in action, yay.

Secondly…so, there's supposed to be a Casavir chapter here. And I tried to write it. I swear that I tried to write it. It's not really important to the plot (what plot?), but I thought Casavir deserved his own chapter because I'm trying to be as…realistic? Balanced? as possible, and it's not fair to badmouth one character from another's POV without giving that character a chance to defend himself. Unfortunately, as I tried writing this chapter, I discovered a horrible truth: I suck at writing Casavir from Casavir's POV. I can't sustain it for any long period of time. I don't know where this block came from, but…there it is.

So instead, a compromise. I'll post snippets from my (several) failed attempts to write from Casavir's POV, and then I'll post the actual chapter that comes next. It could also be seen as an extra-long segment to make up for the delay. I apologize to all the Casavettes out there for the inconvenience. :-b

Part of chapter 17 contains a teeny-tiny homage to RiikiTikiTavi, whose fanfic is awesome.

**Disclaimer: **I don't own Neverwinter Nights, or any of its sequels or expansions, or any of the characters contained herein, aside from my PC, who was created on a Bioware engine and thus probably therefore partially belongs to them too.

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****

16.5

The door opened, finally, and out stepped the young Knight Captain, her eyes downcast and then closed as she rubbed the heels of her hands in them. She closed the door and leaned against it, blowing out her breath in a long sigh, and immediately all thoughts of prayer fled Casavir's mind. He very rarely saw the Knight Captain give any indication that the her office was any strain upon her, and seeing her so wearied made that part in him that he didn't wish to name reach out, wanting to take the burden from her shoulders.

"My lady?"

Of course, that part in him always spoke before the rest of him had a chance to consider what he was saying, leaving him to blunder helplessly along in the conversation. She looked up at his addressed, startled, before her face smoothed into its usual neutral expression, as if whatever bothered her wasn't so pressing after all, as if his half-planned offer to help wasn't as necessary as it had seemed. Part of him sounded a half-retreat, backing away but unwilling to relinquish the battle quite yet.

"I hope I have not delayed you from your own prayers," she said.

"Oh, no," he said, afraid he was speaking too quickly. She nodded a little, and didn't seem inclined to speak further, so he said, "I trust you are…well?"

"As well as ever, Casavir," and she said his name again, gods help him. "And you?"

"I am well," he said. Very well, so long as she would stand there, exuding peace of mind into his soul.

She glanced down the hallway—a servant was lighting torches as the sun set and the stone hall grew dark. She looked back at him, and he must have been looking at her a little too hard, because she said, "Is something wrong?"

"No," he said, again too quickly, and so he tried to school his voice as he said, "I simply…have not had a chance to speak with you, lately, and I…"

She nodded a little, and said, "I was planning on going to dinner, and the perhaps heading down to the Tail, if you would like to join me."

She was too kind, he thought, as he fell into step next to her. She walked with purpose, a crisp stride that wasn't quite a militaristic march, the stride of someone not carried by destiny, but calmly walking out to face it. He admired this courage, as he admired her quiet leadership and overwhelming sense of compassion, and her brown eyes in her pretty face. This observation, made as he glanced at her, was not particularly professional or honorable, but it preyed at the edge of his consciousness and arose in his mind without bidding.

**o-o-o**

"You think there will be a battle, then?"

"Oh yes," she said, quietly. "He will bring the battle to us before we are able to take it to him."

"He will be hard-pressed to defeat us."

"Yes," she said, a grim smile touching her lips before disappearing again. "But yes, the troops are coming along nicely. Bishop—"

"You have put him in charge of their training?" he said, alarmed at this unknown possibility.

"No," she said. "I would prefer not to have them killed for failing. But I have sent him out to supervise patrols, just as I have sent you, and Katriona, and Bevil, and Khelgar."

Casavir couldn't help narrowing his eyes. "And you think this a wise proposition?"

"It's wiser than keeping him here," she said. "He needs employment, and he might as well be busy doing something that will be productive now as doing something that might be counter-productive later."

"You suspect him, then." That, at least, was a relief. He couldn't help but think, sometimes, that his lady was a little too lenient towards the ranger's comments and actions.

A muscle in her cheek twitched, whether trying to grimace or smile, he couldn't tell. "I know he has ulterior motives, Casavir. I don't know what they are, or what he wants, but I know that at the very least he wants something to do, even if he hates doing it."

"He hates the patrols?"

"Of course he does. He hates being—" She stopped, and shook her head, and said, "I am not trying to analyze him or understand him."

"You are better off for it," Casavir said. "It would not be worth probing his motives, only to be tainted by the consideration."

"Do you hate him so much?" She sounded curious, and when he looked down at her she was looking up at him, the question taking shape in her expression.

The honesty and strength of her question made him pause. "While I do not use the term lightly, despite what others might think of those of my order, I find his actions and his words to be intolerable to the point of endangering the goodness of those around him." That was a start. "And furthermore, as he takes such pleasure in tormenting others, especially those I have sworn to protect, I consider myself justified in hating him. It is the hatred the good has for evil."

"He's too lazy to be evil," she said, but he couldn't tell if she was joking.

**o-o-o**

And that's that. Hopefully you get the idea that Casavir is, in fact, a very nice guy, but that his sense of Laura, versus who Laura actually is, is a little…well, different. Maybe one day I'll go back and write this chapter, but for now, let's continue with the next part.

* * *

**17**

They had dinner down at the Phoenix Tail, like she did once a week, gathering all her companions and inviting her other acquaintances to come (though they never did), relaxing over a glass of wine while watching Khelgar down tankard after tankard, challenging anyone who looked at him crossways. The regulars were used to both his threats and the odd assortment of people gathering on these nights, and either chose to stay away or take a seat in the back and watch the show.

Tonight's installment promised to be particularly entertaining, because their Knight Captain spent the majority of it with her head bowed, speaking in low tones with the paladin. The entire Keep (never mind the surrounding lands; hell, even the people of _Port Llast_) was more or less aware of the paladin's feelings for his leader, and of her other companions' penchant for teasing him about his inaction on the subject. But tonight was different; tonight the cleric and the paladin sat together cozily by the fire, deep in conversation to the exclusion of all the others. Not that they were particularly missed; her curious choices in companionship meant the others were more than capable of amusing themselves through mutual antagonism. But it _was_ different for her to seclude herself so utterly. Even if she usually merely sat back and watched all the others, she was alone, or surrounded by them all. She had shown no favoritism—until tonight.

Someone else had decided to take upon themselves the mantle of the loner, though—Bishop sat at the bar, scowling into his own tankard. This wasn't unusual, as he tended to keep to himself anyway (especially since Shandra's death, and the sudden dearth in easy targets who weren't capable of setting him on fire with mere words), but Sal, who had served him for years, thought he was scowling a little more than normal tonight, and happily passed this news onto his gossiping customers. Anything to keep them coming back another night.

Finally Laura took Casavir's hand and squeezed it, saying something (which no one aside from Sand or Elanee would have been able to hear over Khelgar's drunken shouts; the latter gave her captain privacy, while had the former not been busy controlling Qara's magical talents, he would have almost certainly been keeping a mental record) that made him smile. She released his hand and stood up, stretching up and shaking her head from side to side with a yawn.

"I'm going to bed," she announced, prompting the inn's patrons to toast to her health. She received their gesture with a slight smile and a nod and slipped out the front door. Casavir stayed by the fire, staring into it with a thoughtful look on his solemn face (but then again, he always looked like that, like he was contemplating the mysteries of the universe—or perhaps just the depths of whatever soul-crushingly depressing memory had stirred in his mind). But he seemed…content, or more than he'd ever seemed before, anyway. Sal chuckled at this, and returned to the bar to give Bishop his inevitable refill—but the ranger no longer sat there or was, in fact, anywhere to be found in the inn's common room.

Sal frowned, but it wasn't really any of his business, so he set himself to cleaning his tankards with the first clean rag he found, surrounded by the sounds of his bustling pub.

**o-o-o**

**o-o-o**

Laura _knew_ she had left before him, and yet somehow Bishop had beat her to her rooms and was waiting for her when she arrived, standing in front of the decorative screen in the corner, arms crossed. She shook her head as she closed the door behind herself. "One day…"

He snorted, fingers tapping restlessly on his arm. She observed this, and flicked her gaze up to his face. He was…distracted, she thought, though she couldn't think of why. "Well…"

"Oh, I don't know," he said, "you look a bit tired. Dragging information out of him is exhausting, I know, so maybe you should just get some rest."

She worked very, very hard to avoid rolling her eyes. "What?"

"Nothing," he said. "Just that you seemed very cozy and comfortable by the fire—"

"I don't know where you plan on going with this," she interrupted. "Ultimately—"

"—and I would hate to disturb you from that sense of rest and—"

"You're in here, and he's not."

"Isn't he?" There was a gleam she didn't like in his eyes. Granted, that could mean any number of things, given the situation; but _now_, _tonight_, there was an edge to him that she didn't recognize, and that made the gleam harder to define. "It's hard to put him out of your mind, isn't it?"

"Not really," she said, though that was a little bit of a lie. "I mean, if you keep talking about him—"

"You're a woman. Of course it is."

"What is it?" she asked, impatient now, desire slowly draining away to be replaced with annoyance.

His fingers twitched nervously, and suddenly he dropped his arms and started pacing. She leaned back against the door, watching him, until he finally stopped and crossed his arms again, still twitching. He said, "You do nothing but agree with him all day long. First it's about how we should approach the lizardfolk alliance—despite the fact that both the druid and I have more experience with lizardfolk dealings than he does—then it's spending all your time with him at the inn—how you expect anyone to take you seriously—"

"I do not agree with him all the time," she said calmly, aware that she was speaking on the defensive and suddenly wary. "We have, in fact, several key core differences in doctrine that make it impossible—"

"Like you're some kind of slave to doctrine," he snorted, which made her think maybe he didn't know how much she was, and how much she wasn't, how the simple act of letting him in her room went against and with everything she believed, all at once. "But gods, it's sickening to watch, the way you throw yourself—"

"You're delusional," she said, which was an attack itself.

"Maybe I am," he said, still pacing. "I know I am, and yet you're still there, always smiling at him, listening to every damn thing he says and then going along with it—"

"I have to," she said. "I don't always go along with him, but I have to listen. He _needs_ me to listen. And I need you here—"

"He _needs_ you?" He laughed. "Oh, he needs you, all right. Needs you in his bed so he can siphon off that damn tension of his—"

"I would no sooner fuck Casavir than he would ask me, and believe me when I tell you that's never going to happen."

"Give it time," he said. "Keep wearing down his defenses with your sympathetic ear and smiles—"

"I have to give him that. It's the only way to handle him."

"So this is your way of handling me?"

She shut her eyes, unable to watch him restlessly shifting positions. Quietly, she said, "I can't handle you, and we both know it. You're here because you want to be here and because I want—"

"You don't even know what you want."

This was truer, truer than he realized, truer than either of them knew; she opened her eyes to glare at him and said coolly, "Why do you care?"

"I _care_ because you're giving the paladin ideas and that—"

"Gods!" she said, throwing her arms in the air. "You're in here, he's out freezing in some lonely room in the Inn. I don't know how to make this any simpler for you."

He uncrossed and recrossed his arms, trying to hide the way his fists were convulsively clenching. "It's not that simple if he's involved."

"He isn't—"

"But he thinks he is, and gods know all he does all day is think, and he thinks about _you_—"

"He doesn't—"

"He's a godsdamned man with a godsdamned dick, and you're a pretty woman with a pretty smile—"

She shrugged, and he hated it. "Thanks," she said in a sarcastic tone he hadn't heard from her often, if ever.

"—of course he's thinking about you. Don't even give me that bullshit—"

"Why does it matter?" she demanded. Then she seemed to deflate, a little, as her voice took a weary turn and she said, "He's out there, you're in here, so why are we even arguing about this? What does it matter?"

He couldn't immediately answer her, because he didn't know why it was so suddenly and immediately important that he convince her of his point of view. It was just—he was a man, she was a woman, and they didn't need any godsdamned paladins coming in and fucking things up with talk of—of devotion and duty or whatever the hell it was he talked about. And he was a man, and she was a woman, and he didn't want any other men getting their hands dirty with her in mind. And they were fucking (or weren't at the moment, and it wasn't something they should have been arguing over) and that was all there was to it and there was no way he was going to let anyone screw that up.

In the space it took him to try to make up an explanation, he unfolded and crossed to her, shoving her into the door as he grabbed her shoulders and shook her. "It _matters_," he said, "because—because—"

And then, like he hadn't been able to say whatever he had planned outside of the Inn when he'd kissed her, so long (weeks, even) ago, he covered up the inadequacy of words with a kiss. She was glaring at him before he pressed his lips against hers, as hard and forceful and—and—he broke it off, still holding her shoulders, and looked at her for a moment. In the space of a moment he saw her lips, parted and wet, her nose, her hair all tightly bound, and then her big dark eyes with their butterfly-wing lashes, and they made the mistake of letting their gazes meet for the space of another moment, and then he escaped by kissing her again.

By the third kiss her hands had come up to his face, her palms rasping against his stubbled cheeks as she kissed back just as hungrily, meeting, matching—exceeding?—his need with her own. When they broke for air he reached up and unpinned her hair—she shook it free, letting it fall out of its coil, and in the moment she looked up at him she was so beautiful he went hot and cold all at once and masked it by tangling his hands in her hair and kissing her until he forgot everything else.

**o-o-o**

**o-o-o**

Laura awoke exhausted, a peculiar feeling she had come to associate with the perils of staying up too late with paperwork. Or Bishop. Or both. Lately, though, it had tended to be the ranger's fault, a blame that could be overlooked due to the whole, satisfied feeling that accompanied him.

She was in that awake-but-not-up stage she rarely encountered—consciousness, but not quite to the point of opening her eyes. She felt tired, the kind of tired that came from strenuous but non-life-threatening activity, but also warm. She felt warm from head to toe, a sort of deep, muscle-relaxant warmth that was delicious but also out-of-place in her normally chilly bedroom. Enjoy it while it lasts, she chided herself, still not quite willing to wake up completely and face another day of whatever it was they were doing—reforging a sword? Old alliances? Waiting for death to come to their gates so they could see if Veedle was as good as his word? She didn't know, and thinking of Veedle while enjoying her warm blankets made everything less…less…

There was someone in her bed.

Her eyes snapped open and she was already moving before she recognized the arm around her waist. "You're awake," he said. "Took you long enough."

She was warm, so warm, but paralyzed as well. To distract herself, she shifted her head on her pillow, turning to look at him. It was different, seeing him in the light of day. The sunlight came in through curtains, yes, but she could actually _see_ him, make out the lines near his eyes, the ones that were starting to trail from his perpetually downturned mouth. At the moment it was quirked in a strange sort of smile, which didn't quite reach his eyes—eyes that looked almost as disbelieving as she felt.

Bishop was in her bed.

It was morning, and yet he was in her bed, with his arm around her waist.

Which meant he hadn't left in the predawn hours before she woke.

Which meant he had slept the entire night (or what little of it they had slept) by her side.

Which meant he hadn't left.

Which meant he was in her bed.

It was morning, and he was in her bed, his other arm propping up his head as he looked at her.

They stared at each other, trying to figure out why, exactly, this seemed so enormous, neither saying anything but both feeling—uncomfortable? No, she thought, putting her hand to his chest, curling her fingers against it. It was too late to start feeling uncomfortable or awkward. This was—just strange. But not altogether unwelcome, and certainly not unpleasant. Different, that was all. Nothing had changed, things were simply different.

Part of her screamed—commented politely—that she didn't need or particularly want different, not this late in the game, not when the threat of attack was so imminent and if anyone was going to make a move it was rapidly going to be sooner rather than later that they would make it, and definitely not different with _him_. Daisy-chain Laura was decidedly unhappy.

Daisy-chain Laura was also trapped in the burning ruins of the Starling house in doomed West Harbor, and Knight Captain Laura—

No, not Knight Captain Laura either. Knight Captain Laura was a proper officer who ran a keep and reported all her activities to her superiors and spoke sweetly to the paladin in her employ. Knight Captain Laura was bound by walls and stone and duty, and if there was anything in this world Bishop hated (more than himself, she sometimes thought), it was the Knight Captain. It was as much a part of her as the daisy chains, but it had not—_would_ not—encompass her whole being. And here, in this moment, that was who she was—Laura; nothing more, nothing less.

She suspected he was staring at her with much simpler thoughts running through his head, but the sudden rush of freedom she felt made her smile anyway. His queer little smile twitched, a little, and finally he said, "Morning."

"Good morning," she answered.

"No," he said, "just morning." He bent his head, his nose bumping into hers as he kissed her, once, and quickly. "Now it has the possibility of getting better."

"I can't," she said, realizing she had even less of an idea of the etiquette in this situation (especially considering the fact that she almost wanted to lie in bed all day). He gave her an incredulous look, and she said, "The Keep. And I have meetings, and—"

Her breath hitched as he ran his hand down, curving from her waist to her hip, slipping over her leg to run down the inside of her thigh, and she couldn't control her shaky sigh. "What were you saying?" he asked, his voice low and rumbling as he pressed his lips to her shoulder, sending vibrations across her skin.

Her mouth moved soundlessly, eyes half-closed. "I—I…"

"It's not all about you," he said, now working his way across her collarbone, slowly coming atop her.

"I have lost all powers of voluntary motion," she said, breathlessly, and he laughed a laugh that was almost real, a sound that nearly broke her heart, and so she kissed him.

Some time later—the light still seemed to be morning light, anyway—they lay with the blankets tangled around themselves, not talking, just breathing and keeping each other warm. It was even more nerve-wracking than lying in bed at midnight, she was discovering, because at least at midnight she had the guarantee that she could fall asleep and he would be gone when she awoke. Now—now there were no boundaries keeping him here or there, and the thought was almost terrifying.

The knock at the door, however, startled them both. "Knight Captain?" came the concerned voice of her valet.

"Oh," she said, in a surprised voice, having forgotten that perhaps someone might notice her absence and think to check on her (which was a silly thing to have forgotten—he was doing a number on her thinking skills, that was for sure). She clambered out of bed and wrapped the first thing she grabbed—his Cloak of Elvenkind, carelessly draped across all her papers on her desk and probably knocking everything out of its nice, neat pile (how like him, she thought)—around herself as she went over to the door.

He gave her a look (are you seriously going to open the door?) and she returned it (of course not) as she leaned against the door and said, "Nori?"

"Knight Captain!" came the voice a second time, relieved now. "Kana was asking after you—she was worried when you missed the sergeants' meeting this morning—"

Laura, in the middle of another wordless conversation (then why the cloak?). let slip a "damn" and tried to recover (because I don't walk around naked?) her thoughts. "Um. I—" (that's a shame, a look made infinitely irresistible when delivered by a half-naked man with her blankets tangled near his waist) "—tell Kana I'm sorry. I over—" (_stop_ it) "—slept and I'm running a little behind this morning."

"Do you need any—" (I-don't-take-orders, a look she was entirely familiar with, though never in the context of another that's-a-shame) "—assistance, my lady?"

"Oh, no, Nori," she said (please stop it). "I will be ready soon. I just have a few—things—" (this time she glared at him before he was able to arrange his features into a comeback) "—to clean up before—I come out. Could you please go find Kana and…and…ask her to find Grobnar and get an update on how the Construct's coming along?"

"Certainly, my lady. Are you sure you won't need me?"

Bishop was smirking now, and she longed to wipe it off his face through any means available. "No," she said. "Thank you, Nori. That will be all."

She strained her ears and was almost certain she heard footsteps trailing off, so she allowed herself to lean against the door and relax for a moment. He seemed to take this as permission to start snickering, which only got louder when she glared at him again.

"Sending Kana to check on _Grobnar_? You, my lady," he said, mimicking Nori's crisp, polite words to devastating effect, "are a sadist."

"Maybe," she said. "But you, my lord—" she threw his cloak at him as she went hunting for her underclothes "—have to leave."

He sighed. "A shame."

She snorted, pulling on her trousers and binding her chest before turning around. He was already fully dressed, of course, and had come around to her side of the bed and leaned against the wall, watching her. Trying not to blush—it was so _different_, in the daylight, when he could see her too—she opened her wardrobe and started hunting for a tunic. The task actually wasn't that difficult—she had more clothes than she knew what to do with at this point—but it allowed her to busy her hands, rather than having them busy doing…other things.

She gestured with an armful of clothes. "The door is that way."

"I know," he said, pushing off the wall and ambling over towards her, instead. She looked up just in time to see him coming, and then he had kissed her, once, twice, and the third time (always the third time—he was so quick with his kisses that sometimes it was almost like she had imagined them, or as if he had pulled back at the very last second, leaving the warmth of his lips lingering in the air right before hers) she regained her wits enough to kiss him back.

They parted, and suddenly she wasn't able to look at him and he wasn't able to look at her, either. "Come find me when you know what we're doing," he said, "and I will see you then, _milady_." He sketched a mocking bow and slipped soundlessly out her door.

Laura dropped the tunics she was holding in a heap on the floor and sat down heavily on her bed. Aimlessly she reached over and grabbed the first tunic she laid hands on, pulling it over her head. She felt warm and wonderful and satisfied and tired and confused and her room smelled of him many times over, and she liked his scent. Next thing she knew she'd be stealing his clothes so she could keep him with her.

They had two boundaries, the length of the night and their desire for secrecy, and he had broken one. She doubted he would touch the other—they both knew Casavir (for starters, first but certainly not last) would jump at the chance to defend her honor, and she didn't want a fight and Bishop was too lazy to deal with it. But the time allotted to them was a more mutable, shifting thing, imposed more for—for the sake of having a boundary, of having space and time to recover, of being separated because…well, after this morning, she was having a hard time thinking why they imposed this restriction, and she knew that in and of itself was dangerous. She hadn't forgotten the night before, or the way he had kissed her, like he needed to have her and to _know_ that he had her (and how she had kissed back, wanting to be his because it meant he was completely under her power), and it worried her.

But there were other things, such as the end of the physical world as she knew it, and her potentially imminent death, and the inevitable death of her stronghold's guardians, things that required her attention more than did the attentions of a wayward soul who was a liability to everything else, including her own ability to sacrifice herself. She closed her eyes and took a long, deep breath, prayed that the servants who cleaned her room would be oblivious to the mess, and firmly shoved him as far away as her mind would allow. It wasn't much, but it was enough to function, and at this point, she was grateful for that much.

He had stayed the night, and she'd woken in his arms.

She tried not to think about what a nice feeling that was, and knew that she was farther lost than she could have ever imagined.


	18. Chapter 18

**Title:** Not Yet by Lightning

**Chapter:** Eighteen

**Author: ** Jade Sabre

**Notes:** I like this chapter. I like Bishop. These two facts may or may not be related.

Thank you so much for all of the reviews! We're hitting the end stretch now—there are only a few more chapters left—only a few more chances to leave more greatly appreciated, highly cherished reviews.

**Disclaimer: **I don't own Neverwinter Nights, or any of its sequels or expansions, or any of the characters contained herein, aside from my PC, who was created on a Bioware engine and thus probably therefore partially belongs to them too.

* * *

**18**

Bishop's first visit to West Harbor had been indescribably boring. His second had been brief, but amusing (he could _still_ see the barely-suppressed rage on the paladin's face, and the consternation in his favorite cleric's eyes, when her old commander mistook him for her husband), and his third had been too eerily reminiscent of another village, lifetimes before.

So when Nolaloth told them they needed to find a "scar," and they spent the entire trip back to Crossroad Keep arguing about what that meant, while Laura and Zhjaeve had their own private conversation that resulted in Laura announcing to the group that going back to West Harbor was the only way to reforge the sword, he was extremely vocal with his displeasure.

"You've got to be kidding me," were his exact words, from where he stood in a corner of the room, to the Captain, standing at the head of the table in the middle of the room.

Laura, looking tired and as if she were longing for a bath (if you knew the signs), said, "I'm not. The scar Nolaloth mentioned is in West Harbor, near the Starling farm. That's where we have to go."

Bishop opened his mouth to reply and was horrified to discover that the words on his lips were _Are you sure you can handle it_? In an attempt to mask this grievous faux pas, he said, "Are you sure we can _trust_ some giant dead lizard?"

"Know that the words of the spirit were true, and that it too knew the truth of what it spoke."

Neeshka and Qara immediately jumped on these limitations, protesting with lines such as "It was obviously senile" and "_I _could've done better against the King of Shadows than that lame dead thing," which of course brought Sand and Ammon into the conversation, both trying to assert themselves over the sorceress. Bishop, for his part, sent Zhjaeve a nasty look, partially because he hated her and partially because he hated the idea of going back to the stupid swamp village. He knew Laura would let him stay behind—and Elanee knew the Mere better anyway—but he wanted to go, partially because he hated the thought of Laura being alone with the paladin, and partially because he hated the idea of Laura going back to the stupid swamp village. These internal revelations only served to make him mulish.

"We leave in the morning for the Ruins of Arvahn," the lady in question said, in her quiet, steely tone of leadership, forestalling further argument. The others quieted and turned to her, waiting for instruction. "We take the Song Portal into the Mere and proceed from there. Who's coming?"

Zhjaeve immediately blathered something about "_Know _that I must be there," while Casavir unsurprisingly volunteered. Neeshka nervously asked if she was going to be needed. After another brief discussion with Zhjaeve, Laura shrugged, replying that she doubted the King of Shadows would have bothered to trap the town. The rogue, relieved, asked to stay behind; Bishop watched enviously as Laura agreed. _There but for the grace of idiocy go I_…

Fuck it. "Count me in, Captain," he said, not moving from his favored corner.

"I do not believe your presence will be necessary." Funny, but the paladin was awful quick to jump on him these days. "Elanee's familiarity with the Mere—"

"Actually," the druid interrupted, her pretty pert features looking as though every word was costing her, "I don't know if I should go back there unless it's absolutely necessary. My connection to the land makes me vulnerable."

"Exactly," the paladin said. "The dark taint of the area—"

"—will obviously be more of a problem for you." Sneering, Bishop said, "Besides, _someone's_ got to catch the swooning lady if she faints like she did last time."

Casavir flushed at mention of his failure; Laura merely said, "I suppose that makes you obligatory," and that was that. Khelgar volunteered for extra protection; the dwarf was almost as reluctant to leave his captain and Bishop alone as he was to leave the captain alone at all. From what he could tell, she was grateful for this fraternal protection; he thought putting up with the dwarf was more effort than it was worth.

The party thus decided, everyone departed to get some sleep. Bishop stalked Laura all the way to her room—he knew she knew he was following her, even if she couldn't find him exactly, and she wore a tiny amused smile the whole way—and refused to let her alone once inside, though the sex was tired and brief. They rarely talked business, and he wouldn't have asked her about West Harbor anyway; it didn't do to appear too concerned (as if he was concerned in the first place—and he had the faintest inkling that he was, and that made him surly, and she was too tired to put up with that), and they needed their rest.

He woke up to find her clinging to him, pressed up against his back with her arms wrapped around his shoulders, her fingers digging into his arm and a frown on her face. Her frown deepened when he eased himself out of her grasp, her hands clasping at nothing. Unnerved, he woke her up with a long kiss; once she was aware enough to figure out what was going on, she pulled him close again, only to release him almost immediately, embarrassed. She turned on her side, facing the other wall, while he sat on the edge of the bed and got dressed, slowly.

He pulled on his boots and stood, going and getting his cloak from where he'd thrown it on her desk the night before, caring more about obliterating any and all thoughts from his mind (and hers) than where it landed. He looked at the door, then glanced at her over his shoulder; her hair fell over her face, her shoulder the only exposed skin he could see. As if she sensed his gaze, however, she turned onto her back and sat up, holding up the sheets and drawing up her knees, staring at him. He turned without meaning to, caught by her skin rosy in the sunlight, and her hair a tangled mass tumbling over her shoulders as a flush came to her cheeks, and her eyes dark and round, betraying none of the uncertainty that he saw in the way her fingers curled against the sheet.

In the next moment he was back at the bed, kissing her, and her hands crept up and stroked his cheeks—she was so _shy_ sometimes, and so young, and he couldn't bring himself to cut her off like he meant to, because she would look at him with those big dark eyes and he'd be right back where he started. She was completely irresistible, and he hated how he gave into that fact.

**o-o-o**

**o-o-o**

West Harbor wasn't as bad as he'd feared it would be. He could feel the slimy slick darkness of the Mere in his mind, whispering to him the same urges it had when they'd come for the Circle, but he'd made up his mind and it was easy to push them aside. He kept a close eye on his leader, following directly in her footsteps as he always did, ready to act at the slightest hint of collapse. They'd approached from the north, coming to the ruined remains of the Farlong residence. Laura, now assured that her beloved (though how she managed that he didn't know, and he didn't want to know how she found it in herself to love such an unlovable freak) father was safe, only spared it a passing glance. She'd been a bit more unnerved by a trio of shadows disguised as her old rivals, but she never wavered.

They wasted a lot time trying to dig some logs out of the mud in order to make a bridge to cross the creek—the gith seemed to think that even _looking _at the water too long would cause them to turn on each other and start attacking. Bishop thought this was an overstatement, but he couldn't deny that as they crossed he felt himself, for a brief moment, turning, to dive in and follow the current—not yet, he told himself. _Not yet_.

It wasn't until they found a wandering child that they encountered real trouble. It looked just like all the other spirits they had encountered, except the paladin swore that its self-emanating light was brighter, purer than the ones they had seen. Laura recognized it—of course she did—and after a few minutes of speaking to it, it became apparent that it _wasn't_ going to turn into a mass of shadows, so of course she immediately decided that it was under her protection. Bishop knew better than to try to dissuade her, and Casavir, Zhjaeve, and Khelgar all seemed to content to run after their leader as she chased the ghost, trying to figure out how to send it home.

Then the ghost of Retta Starling appeared, and it all went to hell.

"Come to Mama, little one," the ghost cooed, and Bishop, attuned to the darkness as he was, instantly sensed the connection between the phantom woman and the shadows growing around them. Standing directly behind Laura's shoulder, he turned his head to pass on this information, noting that she was shaking and that, more alarming, there were tears in her eyes.

He notched an arrow and said, "No good." The paladin and the dwarf fanned out to either side of their leader, while Zhjaeve stayed back, ready to cast spells at the slightest hint that she should.

"She's not your mother," Laura said, her voice surprisingly strong. Bishop said a mental thanks, available for any god that cared, for her strength. He was more deserving of this fate than she was, and he was quite sure he would have left long before it came down to something like this. It wasn't his style to get tied down to people and places; he didn't think it was particularly something Laura wanted to do, herself, yet once she bound herself to something she would fight for it as long as she was needed. He had been keeping himself, for longer than he cared to think about, from wondering if she would fight for him.

Laura's repeated negations of the spirit's statements drove the shadows to reveal themselves, multiplying at an alarming rate. Sheer number rather than difficulty prolonged the battle, though the fact that it was dark and shadows were damn hard to see even in the daylight didn't help. When all was said and done, he set about retrieving arrows—the only good side to fighting shadows was that they dissipated when they died, meaning the arrows were usually intact. He kept one eye on Laura, who knelt before the child-ghost-thing, explaining what had happened.

Then in a whisper of breath it was gone, leaving the captain kneeling alone. Bishop paused in his work, watching and waiting as precious shadowed seconds ticked by. _Don't do it_…

"Know that this threat has passed," Zhjaeve said, breaking the dark silence. "We can do no more."

"Yeh did well, lass," Khelgar said, hefting his axe. _Don't do it_…

Laura still didn't move. Casavir stepped forward, reaching out a hand. "You have done all you could, my lady. Mourning—"

Aw fuck. He was going to do it.

He realized this halfway through closing the distance between them. He berated himself as he shouldered past the paladin and reached her, grabbing her shoulder and shaking it until she looked up at him. And she was beautiful, covered in dirt and swamp muck and blood and sweat and dirty silent tearstains, and he resented her for that.

"They're dead," he said, his displeasure (but not his concern or his fear or his he wouldn't even think about it) coming through his voice. "They're dead, they're gone, and crying about it isn't going to help."

The paladin made a noise of disapproval but she didn't appear to have heard, staring up at him unblinkingly. He stared right back, trying to convey everything he'd said in his words, and wondered what she saw, or if he'd said too much.

Then she took a deep, steady breath, and nodded. Before he could pull away she reached up and covered his hand with her own, resting it for so brief a moment he could almost think he imagined it even as she slid out from under it. He firmed his arm and let her pull herself to her feet. They both wore gloves, yet the feel of her hand in his was so familiar he immediately felt the urge to squeeze hers. Instead he dropped her hand and said, "Go get your mystic forging done with so we can leave," almost surprising himself with the ferocious dislike in his voice.

"All right," she said, in her normal flat, even tones, and he stalked off to find a hill to keep watch from while she did her mumbo-jumbo. He resented her like hell—she chafed him with the most soothing touch imaginable—but he'd be damned if he'd let her die doing something she had no choice but to do.

He could give her that much, at least.


	19. Chapter 19

**Title:** Not Yet by Lightning

**Chapter:** Nineteen

**Author:** Jade Sabre

**Notes:** So, I'm late again, but I've been wrestling with the end of this chapter ever since I wrote it, and I finally made myself quit tweaking it and send it out for the world to see, so, be gentle but _do _tell me what you think.

Also, I'm heading out of the country; _hopefully _I will still be able to update on a regular basis, but this is just a warning ahead of time in case that doesn't happen.

Thirdly, I'm pleased to announce that I've gotten my other NWN 2 fic back from my beta, and that once I'm done posting this one, I'll be able to start posting that one.

On a fourth note, there's only three chapters left! And I know the timing in this one is a little off, maybe, from what the game's timing is, but I wrote it without the game on hand to reference, so…hooray for artistic license.

Finally, I _love _reviews, and I really do appreciate every single one I've gotten. Thanks for sticking with me this far; the end is in sight!

**Disclaimer: **I don't own Neverwinter Nights, or any of its sequels or expansions, or any of the characters contained herein, aside from my PC, who was created on a Bioware engine and thus probably therefore partially belongs to them too.

* * *

**19**

"We should have a calm night," Kana said at the debriefing. "Their troops are too far away, and they won't risk moving in the daylight—even if they do, it will be tomorrow night before they reach the Keep."

"Thank the gods," Bevil said, running a hand over his jaw. "The men could use this night off."

"We all could," Laura said, feeling her fatigue pressing in at the edges of her vision. "Tell as many soldiers as possible to stand down, and make the sentry shifts as short as possible. Keep the gates open so the patrols can come in and out as much as needed; I want everyone to get as much rest as they can tonight."

"Of course, Knight Captain," Kana said. Laura was almost too tired to restrain a grimace at the title, and settled for a wince instead. "Is there anything else?"

"Not unless you have anything," she said. Kana shook her head. "Well, then. Goodnight, everyone."

The chairs creaked as they were pushed back against the stone floors; her companions stretched, starting to murmur among themselves as they slowly got to their feet. The exhaustion in the room was palatable, and Laura just wanted to get out and crawl into her bed and sleep until tomorrow came. Or perhaps the tomorrow after that. Things were quickly spiraling out of control; she couldn't dictate when they brought the war to her, or how quickly Aldanon would be able to crack the ancient scripts that would give them access into the Mere, and she longed for some semblance of order to her life.

"My lady?"

Casavir, of course, standing at her shoulder. She straightened and glanced at him out of the corner of her eye. He'd had a long, hard battle today, and he'd constantly held her back when she'd felt her guard starting to slip. She couldn't quite see his face, but there was a new kind of tension in the way he held himself near her—close, but not too close.

"Yes, Casavir?" she said, trying to sound simultaneously interested and weary.

"Might I have a word with you?"

"Yes?"

There was a pause; she didn't move, though she really wanted to rub her temples, and he finally said, "Perhaps…in private?"

She couldn't keep her mouth from dropping open, though she held it from being too obvious, and let her breath out in one quick _whoosh_. "Of course," she said, her voice steady.

"Perhaps on the walls," came his voice, once again calm and quiet. "It is a lovely evening."

She caught sight of Bishop, then, lurking in his corner with an ugly look on his face. When he saw her looking he replaced it with one of the worst smiles she'd ever seen, and she was almost too tired to keep the despair from her face. She looked away, swallowed, and said, "Lead on."

She followed him out of the war council room and down the stone hallways, past men hurrying to and fro with messages and orders and the other necessary essentials of running a keep; she wanted to stop them and shake them and tell them to _go to bed_. Instead, she followed the tall, broad-shouldered paladin with grey streaks in his black hair out to the outer walls of her keep. He chose the eastern wall, away from the majority of the sentries, and she followed him without a word.

He spent some time looking up at the sky, so she leaned against the wall and stared out across the lands that, legally, belonged to her. There were woods and hills in the landscape before her eyes, and she felt no kinship to them; her blood was in the swamps and the ocean. She'd never really thought about it before—she prided herself on her ability to be detached, on the fact that she could examine any situation objectively because the only thing she relied on was her faith. Yet here she was, indifferent to woods simply because they were not swamps.

"There is death," he said, "in the air, tonight."

She glanced over at him, the moonlight glinting off the grey in his hair, smoothing the harsher lines in his face. He was still looking up, and so she finally said, "Yes."

He glanced at her, and seemed almost unnerved by the fact that she stared back so calmly, but he took a breath and regained his composure. He looked…gentle, as he did when he was reassuring someone, offering them faith even when his was shaky. She admired his devotion in the face of his doubts; there was something to be said for a man who believed in the principle of goodness so firmly that even his theological difficulties could not sway him from doing what was right.

She almost wished she shared his conviction.

"My lady…" He took another breath, and then faced her and said, "I need to thank you."

"My name is Laura," she said, "and you're welcome."

"Laura." He said her name, and she shivered. "Laura, I…I don't know how to say this. I had been…you have…you have been an example for me."

Her brow furrowed and she made some noncommittal noise to show that she was still paying attention. He looked away again, and continued, "You have reminded me of what it is to have faith, in one's god and in other people. What it is to…to care, for another person. I…I was lost, for a long time, before I met you. And you have since…helped me find my way again. And for that I am grateful."

She shrugged, shifting so that she faced him as well. "You have always had your faith, Casavir. You may have had difficulties finding it, but you have always had it."

A small smile crossed his face, and he looked ten years younger. "Perhaps, but I thank you nonetheless." His smile changed, growing a little more nervous, as he said, "But that's not—there is more I wished to say. Laura…"

He reached out then, with one bare hand, and brushed her cheek; she froze and tried to remember how to breathe. "There is darkness in everyone," he murmured, coming closer to her, "but you evoke such a wonderful light."

"I really don't," she breathed, trying to lean away without being too obvious. He was a good man; he was an upright man; and he thought better of her than she did of herself. No, not better of—he thought differently of her. He had a picture of her that was different from her picture of herself, and it was…too polished, too pretty. She didn't want to be a pretty creature of light; she was a creature of the earth, of flesh and blood, and despite his words she was grounded in her reality. "Casavir," she said, his fingers still lingering on her cheek, "I do…I…I am not who you think I am," she said, "and you know that as well as I."

He paused, looking down a few scant inches at her, and said, "Perhaps you are not," he said. "But I would still be willing to—"

She turned away, and his hand dropped. "I am honored," she said, though she felt betrayed, "but I do not return your feelings."

There was silence, then; the moonlight shone upon the stones and the unfamiliar land, but the air was still with anticipation and thick with silence. She breathed, in and out, closing her eyes and searching for the peace that came with silence—but everything was tense; destiny stretching her entire being taut, everything she had worked for all rushing to a head, denying her the chance to rest until it came to pass.

"It does not matter," he said at last, his voice slightly hitched, as though it _did _matter. "I feel for you, and those feelings are pure." Pure as snow, she thought. As light. "And that is enough to fight for."

He waited, but she went on staring at the black horizon, and she heard him turn to go.

"I never asked anyone to fight for me," she said, dully.

His footsteps paused. "Perhaps you never said the words," he said, "but the thought has drawn us all together."

She shivered again and crossed her arms, leaning against the wall as his footsteps faded behind her. The stone was cool, bleeding through the thin material of her sleeves, so that when she shifted she could feel the grooves in the rock scraping against her. She closed her eyes again, wanting to go to sleep but too tired to try to go to bed just yet. She wished for a brisk night breeze to wake her.

A hot breath scorched the back of her neck. "Done with your happy playtime?"

She wanted to lean back, to fall back against him, so _badly_; she wanted to know she could fall and he would gladly catch her; she wanted to let go and know he wouldn't tell a soul.

Instead, she said, "I don't know what you're talking about."

"So you and the paladin came up here for shits and giggles?"

She rolled her eyes beneath her lids and said, "Are we having that discussion again?"

"I wasn't aware it was a discussion."

"So what is it, an interrogation?" She opened her eyes but didn't pay any attention to the horizon before her. "If so, I'd kindly ask you to notice that, once again, you're here and he's not."

"But you're thinking about him."

"I wasn't until you brought him up."

He snorted, and she couldn't suppress another shiver. "So you just followed him away from everyone else because you thought it'd be fun?"

"I followed him because he asked to speak with me," she said. "I did not know he was—"

"Bullshit."

"You're making me angry."

"Good," he said, which didn't really surprise her, but she was too tired to be properly angry with him, and it was worse with his voice curling right in her ear, sending all the blood from her head to her heart.

She sighed and shrugged, and suddenly he had grabbed her shoulders and was shaking her. She twisted under his grip and turned to face him only to be pressed up against the wall. "What?" she asked, pulling her head back to try to read his expression.

"Stop that," he said.

"Stop what?" she said, trying to play cool against his heated rage.

He shook her again. "_That_," he said, and then he kissed her, his lips hard and forceful, pressing into her as his hands came up to cradle her face, holding her in place while he pushed himself into her mouth. Her knees buckled and she slipped, bringing him over her as her feet sought purchase on the floor, her hands torn between supporting her and flailing helplessly. He was warm and a single thoughtful probe of his tongue was enough to reawaken her senses as his thumbs brushed against her cheeks and she had to grab his arms to hold herself up.

He pulled away and buried his face in her shoulder; she shook, taking unsteady breaths while she tried to deal with supporting both of them. "Stop—_what_?" she asked, turning her head to brush her cheek against his hair.

He mumbled something against her neck, his lips rough against her skin, and she had to steady herself all over again. This became increasingly more difficult as his lips stopped moving from words and started working their way up her neck, down her jaw, light little brushes of kisses that overwhelmed her tired brain. He found her ear and flicked his tongue against it and her breath left her in a quick gasp; her hand reached up to pull on his hair as she tried to get her uneven breathing under some semblance of order.

"You have no idea," he said, one arm going around her waist, the other hand reaching up to pull her hair out of its twist, gently combing it out, his fingers tangling in it as he buried his face against it. "No idea," he said. "And you don't deserve to."

"Tell me anyway," she said, turning her head to kiss his ear, her hand coming up to stroke his cheek, the rough stubble not unlike the coarse rock against her back. She dropped her forehead to his shoulder and whispered, "Please tell me."

He pulled away, his eyes darting to look at her face; she stared back at him, not knowing _what _she looked like, probably exhausted and confused and hopefully not desperate or—or anything else. He looked at her, and then stepped away from her, his arm sliding around her back and reaching out to tug at her hand. She allowed him to pull her to her feet, following her wiry brown-haired ranger down stairs and across courtyards, hugging the shadow of the wall, slipping out of the gates and past the sentries. She stumbled after him and he didn't complain; he set a pace she could follow and she kept to it, her fingers locked with his as her only guide across the land.

He finally stopped in a patch of woods off the road, and at first she didn't notice and bumped into him; he caught her and steadied her as she blinked, trying to focus her eyes on him. "What?" she asked.

His hands rested on her shoulders, and he cocked his head, looking at her. "I wanted to see what you looked like," he said. "Out here, alone."

Her eyebrows went up even as her brow furrowed. "But—"

"Not alone," he said, and for a moment she thought he was going to leave, and she froze. He shook her, just a little, and said, "You always look so beautiful and I wondered if it was because the walls kept you contained and safe and you belonged there so of course you looked as if you fit."

"And?"

He blew out his breath in a sigh but didn't speak; instead he cupped her cheek in one hand, tracing his thumb over the bone below her eye, and running his fingers back into her hair, the look in his eyes—blank, as if he was focused on nothing more than the soft, delicate caress.

Something was terribly, terribly wrong if he was being tender. Sure, he'd sometimes stroke her gently, but she figured that was what happened in the heat of the moment, and he never took the time just to _touch_ her, and certainly not her face. She tilted her head, her hair falling in her eyes, and said, "_What_?"

He said, "I don't know," and leaned forward and kissed her, softly this time, slowly, heat pouring into her mouth and traveling leisurely down to her toes, giving her time to acclimate to it, to slip her arms around him and bring him closer. He kissed her again, a little more insistently, and each kiss made her more and more like putty in his arms until she had to break away.

It gave him an opening, and the next thing she knew they were both shirtless and stumbling, kissing haphazardly; her mouth found his ear, the crown of his head as he dropped his head to her breasts, planting kisses on her bare skin, hard and taut in the brisk air. She operated on pure sensation, exhaustion shoving any other considerations to the side, but she didn't know _where _to touch or kiss or caress, didn't know how to soothe his increasingly frantic kisses. Her back hit a tree and she felt the bark scraping her flesh; she tangled her fingers in his hair and tugged his face back up to hers, kissing him, pulling at his lips as her palms held him in place, and he kissed her back with a softness at odds with his harsh breath, with the way his fingers dug into her thighs as he pulled her _up_, pushing her into the tree. Everything—from the cold night air to their utter exposure under the moonlight—felt _new_, somehow, from the way the muscles in his back shifted under her hands, to the near-violent desperation with which he drove himself, to—

"Laura?" he whispered in her ear, and she nearly lost it; the sound of her name in his deep, ragged drawl was so utterly strange and yet utterly welcome that she could barely manage an "uh-huh?" to answer him.

He paused, and pulled away from her; the look in his eyes made her desperate to kiss him, to hold him, to do _something _to reassure him, but he closed his eyes and rested his forehead on her shoulder and simply said, "Laura," again, and then she was unaware of anything she couldn't touch (stubble against her neck) or taste (sweat off his shoulder) or hear (was that her voice, screaming?) or see (darkness, all around) or feel (oh gods oh gods oh _gods_).

They slipped down to a tangled mass of arms and legs on the ground, he sprawled half-atop her, both breathing heavily. Her fingers curled into the ground as he shifted once more, and the dirt beneath her fingertips was cool, and soft, and she took a deep breath and relished feeling _alive_.She relished the feeling of being underneath him, of feeling his chest heave and his heartbeat gradually slow; her fingers danced over his skin, sliding into his slick hair and drawing him more comfortably atop her. She was fully satisfied, and fully terrified.

"Bishop?" she whispered as he pillowed his head on her shoulder.

"Mm?" he said, burying his nose against her chest and inhaling.

She paused, still running her fingers through his hair, and finally said, "You said my name."

"Laura?"

Even in her doubled exhaustion, somewhere inside her she somehow managed to conjure up a shiver, a spark that combusted in her gut. "Yes."

He was quiet, one armed draped across her waist, his fingers absentmindedly tracing the curve of her hip. Her eyes fluttered closed and she instinctively pulled him closer; his other arm groped around and finally found a cloak to draw over them.

"'s a nice name," he said, so quietly she wasn't sure she heard him, and then he said, "Go to sleep, Laura."

Her _name_—in his voice—but she couldn't keep herself awake any longer to contemplate it, and slipped into a bone-weary sleep.


	20. Chapter 20

**Title:** Not Yet by Lightning

**Chapter:** Twenty

**Author:** Jade Sabre

**Notes:** This chapter and the next one are both very short, but I felt both of them were necessary and un-expandable, and so here's the first one. It's one of my favorites; it's the last one I wrote, I think, and perhaps…softens the blow of what we all know is coming.

Reviews, as always, are some of the most wonderful things that you could ever give me ever. If you like the fic (or even if you don't), now's the time to tell me!

**Disclaimer: **I don't own Neverwinter Nights, or any of its sequels or expansions, or any of the characters contained herein, aside from my PC, who was created on a Bioware engine and thus probably therefore partially belongs to them too.

* * *

**20**

She woke to a light breeze tickling her face, and Bishop's breath in her ear. Her eyes snapped open and she tensed, taking a moment to absorb her surroundings before relaxing. They were curled in a hollow by a tree, their cloaks layered over them for warmth, and she had slept with his chest for a pillow, the most comfortable part of the night. The light filtering through the trees was the dim blue-grey of the sky just before dawn, a color she had known since she was a little girl, a color of unease and tension. Each dawn might be her last; sunset, at least, came with the promise of a day ended, and lived.

And _this _dawn…

She rested her head a moment longer, her cheek warmed on his chest, his hair soft against her skin, the motion of his breathing lulling her back to sleep. His arm lay haphazardly across her shoulders, his fingers almost but not quite holding her tight. Her eyes took all this in at a glance; she would have to move her head to see his face.

And so she pressed a kiss to his chest and raised herself up, propping herself up against the ground as his arm fell away from her, letting the breeze blow across her shoulders, giving her goosebumps. She shivered and brushed hair away from her face, and when she looked down at him, his eyes were open, watching her face.

They stayed that way for a moment; she knew her face was blank, but only because she couldn't make her muscles move, or change; they simply _were_. He looked the same—tired, or bored, blank, just—watching.

And then his eyes dropped below her face, and she turned away and sat up, giving him a lovely view of her back, if he wanted it. "It's almost dawn," she said, her voice quieter than she meant it to be. He didn't respond, and so she finally pushed away the cloaks, leaving them to cover him and drawing her legs up for a moment, until she overcame the chill. "I need to go back."

She was acutely aware that she was naked, just as she was acutely aware that he didn't move, merely lay back amid the roots and the sticks and the moss and watched her dress. She pulled her linen breeches on, one leg at a time, wondering if she was teasing him, and then her leather pants over those. She stood and wrapped her breasts in their bindings, securing and supporting them, and then pulled her tunic over her head, tugging a moment to get her arms through their sleeves. She slipped on her overcoat, the least obnoxious one she owned, worn and faded brown without a trace of Neverwinter insignia, and then donned worn boots to match. She stood for a moment, still not looking at him, feeling his gaze on her as if her methodical actions had meant nothing, and she still stood naked before him.

She reached for her hair and gently tugged it out of her shirt, shaking it loose, and found her extra hair pins in her overcoat's pocket, and that was when he spoke.

"My offer still stands, you know."

She glanced at him, lying on his back with his arms crossed beneath his head, his gaze suddenly directed to the sky. "Which one?"

"You know." When she didn't reply, standing there with her pins unconsciously grasped in her hands, he turned his head to look at her. "Ditching this. Camping away for a year or two."

She took a deep breath, her stomach tightening. "Were your visits to the Mere that productive?"

He grinned, sardonically, but his lip twisted and he looked away. "Something like that."

She stared at him, and he sat up, meeting her gaze. "Well?"

It was her turn to look away, down at her hands, swallowing. "I can't."

"Can't or don't want to?" His voice was lazy with indifference, his eyes still narrowed. "Can't, or won't?"

"I can't." Not now. She wouldn't. She didn't want to. Not today. Another day, perhaps; a day when the combined forces of the powers of darkness weren't preparing to descend upon herself and her people, a dawn that didn't promise endings, one way or another. But in this dim blue-grey light she could no more disappear into the swamps than Lathandar could keep the sun from rising. Blasphemy, perhaps; but today he could not deny her, even in apostasy.

"Do you really want to go back there?" he drawled, still watching her not watch him.

The wind rustled her hair, blowing it into her face; irritated, she tightened her fist, and then quickly pinned her hair back, raising her eyes to meet his gaze—angered, or simply annoyed. "Yes," she said.

She had to step to him to retrieve her cloak; as she bent over, tugging it free, she took his chin in her other hand.

"You should take my offer," he said, his voice foreboding and yet still, somehow, lazy.

She looked at him, her fingers lightly stroking his cheek, and then she said, "You are asking me," in a quiet voice, not wanting to accuse him, simply to explain, because it seemed—cold, to leave without an explanation, "to give up everything I have worked for, over the course of my life."

Her hand fell away, and she straightened, looping her cloak over her arm, her gaze never leaving his face. "Before you dismiss my answer, I would ask that you ask yourself, whether or not you would do that for me."

And then she turned, and walked back towards the road and her Keep, the sun in the sky and the wind at her back.


	21. Chapter 21

**Title:** Not Yet by Lightning

**Chapter:** Twenty-One

**Author:** Jade Sabre

**Notes:** A million bazillion thanks to everyone who's reviewed so far. Mere words cannot express my thanks and my happiness. Only one more chapter to go!

This one was tough, guys, and I hope I did it justice.

**Disclaimer:** I don't own Neverwinter Nights, or any of its sequels or expansions, or any of the characters contained herein, aside from my PC, who was created on a Bioware engine and thus probably therefore partially belongs to them too.

* * *

**21**

There were very few people in the world (fewer, now) who understood why Laura Farthing was so quiet and calm, all the time, how she managed to pare down her reactions to the smallest of smiles or the briefest of nods that, so rare in their frequency, warmed the hearts of anyone on the receiving end of one. Those knowledgeable few also knew that Laura was as unaware of her effect on other people as she was aware of her own sense of poise, and its origin. She stood tall, straight, and quiet, and could do so for hours on end; she looked on everything with a regard as indifferent as it was observant; and sometimes, very rarely, it seemed her blood ran as cold as an elf's.

Laura loved her father and knew he loved her in return, and so she modeled herself on his behavior, unconsciously as a child, with a growing conviction as she grew older. Their love was never one of emotion, of words or of the normal gestures—a hug, a kiss goodnight—but one of action, of protection or teaching or sheer patience. She thought she understood him, as much as anyone understands the ones they love, and so she knew that he never said he loved her because that would leave him open, vulnerable, and she wanted to be as strong as he was. As she grew older, and learned the how and the why of his silence, she understood that his strength lay in the wall he had constructed between himself and the world, and that whatever he felt behind the wall he kept to himself. So Laura mimicked him, and over time the mimicry became habit, and she found her wall useful and saw no reason to destroy it simply because others found it strange or unnerving—she privately enjoyed the faint pride in her father's manner when she behaved reasonably and rationally, rather than emotionally. They were alike; they understood each other, and she needed no other form of support.

Now, however, with her father directing her archers and her soldiers looking on, she realized she hadn't understood, not really, and that her walls weren't half as well built as those surrounding her keep. Now she knew the wall wasn't the strength, but the resistance; walls were only as strong as the ones standing atop them, defending them, and her father had nothing left for such. She didn't realize she knew this; it was as instinctive as her panicked attempts to shore up the breach, to lock down the places she'd somehow missed when she'd first tried to harden her heart, and just as painful. And she could fool her soldiers, and she could fool her sergeants, and she could fool her closest companions; but behind the reserve, behind the numbness, behind the wall, there was no strength; only pain.

"I almost stayed," he said. "And that's why I have to go."

_I almost stayed_, he said, facing her from across the courtyard, but the open gate framed his shoulders and the backlit sun left his face in shadow, and he was already turning away.

"Then go," she said.

And he went.

The wind stirred, brushing her hair, and blowing away the traces of his footprints in the dirt.

And he was gone.

"Um," Neeshka said, into the silence of the courtyard, devoid even of chirping birds—Elanee had sent all the wildlife elsewhere—and Laura didn't know what expression she gave in return. "What do we do now?"

"We fight," she said.

"But—" Casavir started.

"He wanted to go. He's gone. We can hold the Keep without him. We could hold the Keep if all we had were farmers with pitchforks. The men are ready; the walls are strong; our wills are sure. We fight."

She said the words, and knew the others believed her, and didn't know why; she was nothing more than a stupid girl with a broken gate and a wall with no defense—

But there were soldiers on her walls, and her mind, always two steps ahead of her heart, knew what to do—

_Hoar protect me_, she prayed as the men regained their courage, slowly coming out of their surprised stupor and fortifying for the attack. _Hoar protect them from my own stupidity. Hoar protect me from myself._

She felt overcome with peace, locking away the distractions so carefully she was sure she didn't feel anything at all, and a rush of strength that defied any understanding; it filled every crack in her soul, and begged to spill out over the walls, even as the sentries shouted the first warning. _Trust in my strength_,_ and your self_, _little one_, he whispered, _and I will see you through this day._

She smiled, and raised her shield to face the onslaught.


	22. Chapter 22

**Title:** Not Yet by Lightning

**Chapter:** Twenty-Two

**Author:** Jade Sabre

**Notes:** Well, here it is you guys: the grand finale. This is…a little nerve-wracking, to say the least, as I've never finished something before, never put it out there for everyone to say with the little sticker that says "that's all there is; there isn't any more." So…thanks for sticking with me this far! You can now go back and read the whole thing from beginning to end without any interruptions or waiting! That's something, isn't it?

This chapter contains a tiny homage to "The Smell of Destiny" because I am a Sandwhore.

I owe thanks, once again, to several people:

Beehoon, my most faithfulest reviewer, who in exchange for her reviews got to listen to me babble on about my story probably more than she really wanted to. So, thanks for all the reviews, and thanks for listening!

To everyone who left reviews, because I seriously go back and reread those often, because they are like little warm chocolate nuggets for me soul. Y'all also helped me see my story from the perspective of someone who hasn't been sitting with it for a year, which really helped me focus my edits and just enjoy what I was doing. Also, I love feedback in any form. Mere words cannot express my gratitude.

To Rhia and Mozco, who write awesome fanfics that often distract me from mine, because I like to pimp out other people whose works are awesome.

And finally, to my dearest darlingest Quark, who betaed this fic for me and has probably read some sections of it at least four times, trying to help me make it better, despite the fact that she prefers happy bubbly lovey couples (though I haven't the slightest idea why she can't see Bishop and Laura in the light…). Je t'adore!

Of course, just because the story is finished doesn't mean you have to stop leaving reviews. Reviews are always wonderful, and do nothing but help, writing- and morale-wise.

Finally, if y'all are interested, in another month or so I'll begin posting my other NWN2 fic, currently titled "Falling Slowly." It's fairly different from this one, but I love it to death as well, and hopefully y'all will like it too.

Thanks again for getting this far with me. And now, before this note becomes as long as the chapter itself, I present to you…the end!

**Disclaimer:** I don't own Neverwinter Nights, or any of its sequels or expansions, or any of the characters contained herein, aside from my PC, who was created on a Bioware engine and thus probably therefore partially belongs to them too.

* * *

**22**

They found themselves in what looked like an antechamber, a small room with the small door they had come through on one end and a large, imposing version of that door on the other. Their footsteps echoed as they walked every inch, doing their best to search for traps with the little knowledge they had picked up from watching Neeshka work. Laura, almost cross-eyed with exhaustion, couldn't see anything at all and instead elected to stand in the middle of the room. She gripped her sword out of habit rather than conviction, and once the others stopped walking around, said, "Do you think we can rest?"

Her companions glanced at each other with varying levels of concern. "It looks all right," Casavir said.

"But everywhere else has appeared perfectly safe, and then the moment we sit down, something appears to attack us!" Sand was on the last strands of his self-control: his appearance was wildly mussed and streaked with blood, his eyes wide and very pale. His voice climbed in pitch, reaching near hysterics, as he said, "And I'm out of spells and if they attack again—"

"Know that I, too, am out of spells," Zhjaeve said, "and will be unable to supplement the _kalach-cha_'s powers—"

"We're all out of spells. Even Grobnar," Laura said, glancing at the gnome, who seemed caught in a song, unable to stop singing, looking almost as traumatized as Sand did.

"Well _I'm_ still running hot," Qara said, crossing her arms over her chest; Laura noted that her arms were shaking.

Sand didn't even sneer a response, which was a bad sign, though Jerro did say, "Even if you were, your abilities don't include protection, which is what we need if we want to rest."

Laura surveyed the others, Khelgar gripping the Hammer of the Ironfist in his gauntleted hands, Elanee making puddles on the floor as a sparkling water elemental. And Casavir, still standing tall and proud though his sword dragged the ground, and Jerro and Zhjaeve unruffled aside from the blood staining their clothes. She took note of herself, her trembling limbs, her swimming vision, and finally said, "I have to rest, or I'll fall over."

The others stared at her; she'd never, in her memory, admitted quite as much weakness as she did in that minute. She hated the feeling, hated the concern bordering on panic in the others' eyes—"Then we will rest," said Casavir, first to recover, first to jump to her aid.

"You rest, lass," Khelgar said. "I'll watch for yeh."

She shook her head. "If I rest, we all rest," she said. "It's only…" what? Fair? She laughed at herself.

She dropped to her knees and bent until her head rested on the stone floor, a position of complete submission. _Please_, she prayed, the word becoming her mantra, over and over, a prayer for rest and protection and strength and something to soothe her mind. A desperate supplication to a god she knew was listening, one she knew she didn't deserve, her mind focusing to deliver the one word she thought might save her soul. Just one word: _please_.

She didn't know how much time passed, but gradually she felt her strength returning, and knew that her spells were reforming themselves in her mind. Her _please_ continued in the back of her mind, as constant as her faith itself, as she straightened up and discovered the others in various positions of repose: Sand smoothing his robes compulsively, Jerro sleeping standing up with his eyes open, Casavir deep in his own prayers. Grobnar seemed to be playing his Wenderkazoo: a lullaby, judging from the way Qara was asleep right next to him, looking young and vulnerable. Elanee was an elf again, huddling next to Khelgar, and Zhjaeve sat cross-legged, meditating.

She suddenly felt an overwhelming rush of affection for them, her gratitude towards her god spilling over to include these people who were willing to follow her to their deaths, if necessary. She didn't want to be attached to them, and she wasn't—and she could tell herself she wasn't, but she knew herself in the depths of her weakness and knew that they were a greater gift than her spells, the greatest gift she had ever received. She wiped sweat off her face with her hand and pretended she didn't notice her own tears, and said quietly, "Report?"

"Know that I am prepared," Zhjaeve said, her eyes still closed.

"As ready as we'll ever be," Khelgar said.

"The gods are with us," Casavir said. "We will not fail."

Laura smiled at him before she could stop herself, and she saw his face brighten before faltering. Sand saved them from an awkward moment by saying, "I do not understand why I have followed you here, but I am prepared to keep going."

"Thanks," she said dryly, to match his tone, looking around for the others' assent as she stood. They followed suit and fell into position behind her as she looked up at the large door looming over them.

"Well," she said, "here goes."

She pushed against it, and it opened to reveal a huge, domed stone chamber. A statue of a woman, reminiscent of the statues from the Ritual of Purification, stood at the front of a large circle in the middle of the floor. Framing the circle with her were several large, glowing crystals, and in the middle was a large, black, roiling mass of shadow. And there, huddled against one of the crystals, was Neeshka.

Khelgar cried her name and ran over to her, Casavir and Elanee hot on his heels; Laura took a slower pace, glancing around the room as the hair on her back of her neck prickled. By the time she reached them Zhjaeve was already muttering a healing spell; the tiefling was bruised and bloody, shivering against the bonds on her wrists.

"I was wondering…when you'd show up…" Neeshka managed, looking up at Laura, her eyes hazy with pain and a deeper hurt.

Laura crouched before her and met her gaze, unwavering. "Who did this to you?" she asked, as calm as she ever was, clenching her fists to hide the fact that her hands were shaking. Soon enough, she told herself, though her outer trembling contradicted the peace she felt internally. She felt…calm, focused—prepared. Destined.

"Garius," Neeshka said, her voice just as flat.

She gazed at her for another moment, willing her to understand. "Then he will die," she said simply.

Neeshka stared at her a moment more, then broke into a painful smile. "I thought you'd say that. He—tortured—"

"She has lost a great deal of blood," Zhjaeve said.

"It's a trap," Jerro said immediately. "Her blood—"

"We need to get her out of here—" Khelgar insisted.

"We can't leave now!" Qara protested.

"_Know_ that she is—"

"Too late now," Grobnar said cheerfully.

Laura straightened, leaving Neeshka in Zhjaeve's hands, and turned to see Garius strutting across the floor, the unearthly flame in his skull burning a little dimmer than the last time she'd seen him. He didn't have an expression to read, and his voice was as arrogant as always.

"So you made it," he said. "I didn't expect you to get this far. I'm impressed."

"You're stalling," she answered, glancing at the shadows on the floor, and the shape they were beginning to take.

"Perhaps," he said, and she thought she heard a smile in his voice. "You have done a great deal to disrupt our efforts, child, and for that you will answer—and you alone."

If he'd had lips, he would have been smirking at her. She refused to rise to his bait and said, "If you wish to fight me, so be it. Let them leave and we'll settle your debt."

"My debt?" He laughed. "It is you who have incurred the debt, child, and I believe it is time for you to pay. Your companions—" she saw a few of them start out of the corner of her eye, and felt Casavir immediately step behind her "—have the opportunity, now, to receive mercy and extract their payment from you."

She stared at him, and after a moment said, "I never asked for them to follow me. They are free to come and go as they please, and yet…they are still here." She almost said _thank you_, but didn't want to give Garius any more ammunition than he already had.

"You speak as if there are no fractures in your group. But you know there are struggles," Garius said, his voice becoming almost silky. "There are contentions of power and loyalty—"

"I never asked for anyone's loyalty," she said. "If any of them didn't want to be here they would have left already."

"Funny you should mention that," he said, "for I have met someone who can, in fact, think for themselves, and recognize the _true _enemy here…"

She felt her gut—her entire _being_—seize up, as solid as Casavir's voice as he uttered a single name: "Bishop."

**o-o-o**

She looked cold.

He wasn't quite sure why this was the first thing to spring to mind—for starters, the fact that she looked dirty and tired was much more obvious—but as he stepped up next to the Shadow Reaver, he could only think how _cold_ she looked.

"It's over, Farthing," he said, and she didn't even have the grace to have a glint of amusement in her eyes. "It doesn't have anything to do with you," and her face was immobile, "but your uncle…well, some things just can't be ignored."

She was staring at him, waiting for him to explain, and yet he could see nothing of _Laura_ in the frigid woman staring at him from a few feet away. He felt a muscle in his jaw twitch, and he said, "I'm almost sorry," as harshly as he could.

"How quaint," she said.

"I don't get tied down to things," he said.

"I can respect that," she said.

"It doesn't have anything to do with you."

She waited.

"Duncan," he said finally. He hated the fact that the others were watching, hated that even the iciest glares from the pale-eyed paladin and wizard were nothing compared to the expression on her face.

"Duncan."

"Oh, go on, Bishop," Garius interrupted. "We have time."

"You're stalling," Laura repeated.

"Do you want to hear the boy's story or not?"

Bishop tensed, clenching his jaw shut and shifting to hide his hands as they balled into fists. Punching the Shadow Reaver wouldn't actually hurt it, and nothing was going to make her stop looking like that.

"Do I?" she asked, shifting her attention back to him, sounding utterly apathetic.

"He saved my life," he said, focusing on her, willing her to give him something, _anything_. No, he didn't want anything from her—he'd already had his fill, been there, done that, fucked her most of the ways he knew how and a couple of ways he hadn't known until they'd met—he didn't _need_ her to do anything. He didn't even have to explain it to her. Besides, what would he say? Fuck Duncan, _I have to leave because I want to stay_? She would only stare at him like she stared now, not as if she didn't comprehend, but as if she could comprehend and didn't care to.

Shit. He was damned from here to eternity.

"Found me outside my burning village, about to die, surrounded by dead Luskans. Decided it would be cute to save my life."

"But."

"But I was the one that set the place on fire in the first place. So he thought it'd be cute to blackmail me with his knowledge."

"You set your village on fire."

"Luskan initiation ceremony."

"Your own village?"

He couldn't suppress a shiver at how toneless her voice was; he couldn't forget the look in her eyes when she'd seen Retta Starling's dead body. "It wasn't a West Harbor village. It—" she didn't even flinch when he said the name of her _village_, by every fucking god in the Nine Hells "—for every person like you there's a village with a hundred like me, all right? It didn't deserve to survive."

"Arbitrating justice, are we?"

His lip twitched in a sneer. "I was going to kill the Luskans too, trap everyone all together. And I _tried_ to tell them to get out, and they didn't go. And the Luskans figured it out. And there I was, all ready to die, and Duncan decides to give me my hell on earth instead."

There were other things he could say, like _I tried to tell them to leave but they wouldn't, they wouldn't listen and they deserved to die, I couldn't stop them_ or _I felt so _free_ when I thought I was going to die, and he took that away from me_—but he'd never said anything half so private in the dead of night when she was asleep in his arms, and he certainly wasn't going to say it in front of her stupid companions and the smarmy Shadow Reaver, not when he wasn't even sure she was _there_.

"So now I'm calling my own shots again, got it? My debt to you is over."

"There was never a debt to me in the first place." She shrugged and he felt his resolve crack. "I've said it a hundred times: no one is obligated to me. Whatever your perceptions of the situation may have been, I have never considered you to owe me a single arrow in an enemy's back."

She was lying, he told himself sternly, though he knew she never lied under the best of circumstances and that these certainly didn't count.

"As touching as this is," Garius said, his voice like an oil slick over a pond, "it's time to end the conversation. Our lord approaches."

"I—" he started, turning on the undead wizard.

"_Silence_, Bishop."

He glared at him, not bothering to hide his rage, and then, through the haze of his anger, he heard her voice—flat, but with that wry, teasing undertone so faint he wasn't sure he heard it. "Taking orders from Garius, are you?"

His face broke into a grin, marred by his fury at the world, twisted with relief. "Watch it," he snarled. "I—"

"I said _enough_," Garius said sharply.

Bishop snorted. "Well, if that's all you needed me for, I guess I'll be going now." He turned.

"Where are you—"

"I really think you need to start fighting your own battles. You face her on your own." He wasn't looking at her when he said it, which was probably for the best. Cut and run and nobody got hurt.

Well. _He_ didn't get hurt.

"You will die if you leave here, Bishop," Garius said, his voice surprisingly menacing, considering its lack of bodily force. "I will come for you when I'm done."

He heard a scuffle going on behind him and ignored it. "Garius," he said, laughing to himself, laughing at the world, "you're going to die if you stay."

He walked away, listening to his laughter echoing in his mind—and then he heard an "I _won't_!" and felt a sudden sharp pain in his chest.

He looked down and saw the tip of—something sharp and pointy—he tried to reach around to pull it out, but—that was strange, the ground was awfully close, he needed to—sticky, wet, blood—these were all feelings he was accustomed to dealing with but—not—like—

Neeshka doubled over on the ground, howling with pain and panting with the exertion of defying the binding on her blood, but her dagger flew true, embedding itself in Bishop's back as he walked away, sending him to the floor in an instant.

**o-o-o**

And Laura could only stare.

Garius was saying something—laughing—Khelgar was congratulating Neeshka, trying to calm her tremors—

Laura stared.

Garius kept talking—he was talking to the others now, his voice diplomatic, his words cunning, and the others were listening—

Laura stared.

Qara walked across the room, and she didn't notice. Neeshka screamed as Garius applied more pressure to her blood, and she didn't notice. Sand could've been declaring his undying love for her, and she didn't notice.

She no longer had the advantage of revenge; she no longer had the advantage of being a single person, the living heart of the sword; she was a thousand shards held together with sheer disbelief, quivering, waiting for the suspension to end, prepared to shatter at the first distraction.

Know _that it is your will that guides the Sword, that unless your will is focused, the sword is nothing more_—

Nothing more than what? Nothing more than—_she_ was nothing, she didn't—she couldn't—

And then she saw an opening, and a plan emerged half-formed in her mind, and _oh _it was stupid but she hadn't realized what was holding her together. Oh my God, she prayed,forgive me for being weak. Oh my God, forgive us all.

**o-o-o**

Smoke. He smelled smoke.

He smelled smoke and his nose hurt.

Laura must've brought him back to life.

Then his chronology of events caught up with him and he thought _no, stupid, Laura wants you dead_—and he had been dead, he was fairly sure of that—something was turning him over, putting him on his back—oh, right. The knife. Or something. In the back.

Then he felt a hand on his cheek and his eyes snapped open.

She was staring back at him, her eyes wide and—tear-filled. He blinked, thinking his eyes were having trouble focusing, but there she was, one trembling hand covering her open mouth as she crouched over him. The room was dark, smoky—someone must've done something obscuring—the sounds of battle were in his ears—her thumb was brushing along his jaw—and they were staring at each other, like neither could quite believe what they saw.

He tried to speak, then—"Don't," she whispered, her voice shaking—then she was kissing him, oh gods—then she pulled him up to a sitting position and said, "Get the hell out of here."

He tried to speak again, and she said, "_Don't_. I need you to get the hell out of here and not come back, and I need you to do it _now_. Get. Out."

She pressed her lips to his forehead, her hand lingering on his cheek as she got to her feet—and then she was gone into the smoky darkness, and he was alone again. And alive.

Strangely, he didn't mind.

He grabbed his bow off the floor, stood, and ran in the direction his instincts told him the exit lay. The sounds of battle echoed behind him; fresh air lay ahead, and the freedom that came with people thinking you were dead. And the swamp held all sorts of nooks and crannies to wait out the battle, the kind that only a native would be able to find, if they knew they needed to look.

He grinned to himself, and went.

**o-o-o**

The smoke cleared, and he was gone.

The others didn't notice; the raging battle with Qara and Garius drew their attention away; but she saw, and the last of her worries disappeared from her mind, gone before she could even determine what they were, but it hardly mattered now. She felt a spell building up her in mind as she prepared herself, centering her concentration on the battle—not the battle itself, but the victory to come.

_  
Thank you_, she said, and the lightning struck.


End file.
